lumberlady | Noctium

[Honestly, she's glad he picks the cushions scattered along the edge of her hay and reed bedding. Despite it's rustic look, it is at least comfortable, laid quite thick. Beside it is a sewing basket that seems to be what she must work out of in the evening, a few half-finished infant garments inside, and pinned to the wall nearby... a well-done charcoal sketch of a jinba babe in arms, smiling, done by a certain centaur who had seen her daughter's face the night kitsune urges had sent him wandering where he shouldn't.]

I've never had saffron tea, I don't think...

[So perhaps tonight would be full of new experiences. She doesn't want to make her guest do everything, though, so she takes the tea as he sets the "table", hoping to help but also a bit afraid to ruin the brew if it took fixing.]

Do you just make it the regular way... ?

[He's free to take over her kitchen temporarily if need be... She's. As sad as she's been, food was... a big motivator. And there's a rather audible rumble coming from her larger lower gut.]

[Ah... there is no end to Chiron's multitude of talents. Except in perhaps in completely getting the human perspective. She's an adorable babe. Konoha must mis-... Waver's eyes drop slightly when he sees clothing for an infant jinba and he continues setting up the feast for two.]

Almost. You steep the tea with the cinnamon, cardamom pods, and rose petals for about five minutes, then you add the saffron and steep for another three to four minutes. Then, you just add the honey until it's as sweet as you like.

[He's not a good cook, but he can make tea and coffee fairly well, even if something fancy like saffron tea or turkish coffee only happens when the moon is blue.]

[There really hadn't seemed to be. Once his lies about being simply just a centaur had unraveled when his mana diminished and he couldn't hide that two-legged form any longer, he'd also stopped bothering pretending he wasn't capable at almost every skill under the sun... Except some that really mattered. Like how to relate to people, to make friends, to actually be just a jinba. Er, centaur.

She liked to think she had helped with that.]

Ah, in that case...

[She returns to the kitchen corner and returns with a tea set, water hot and ready for steeping, set down beside him before she lumbers more comfortably to her belly, legs curled up under her and a pillow pressed under a lower shoulder.]

I'm sorry, you're my guest, but... Would you mind making it? I'd hate to mess up the tea when the food looks so nice...

[There was a certain art to tea, after all. And he was the more experienced... and the food really was interesting looking? The colors and arrangements and smells... It isn't like much of anything she would encounter in her own world, her own time.]

Of course. It's no trouble.

[It's no real imposition on him, truly. He knows how to make it, she's unsure, and circumstances wouldn't allow him to protest even if it were not the case.

He hums faintly as he brings the water up to heat, inhaling the slightly sweet green scent of the loose silverly white tea leaves he brought, before he portions out a measure to steep into the pot. In right after, go a cinnamon stick, cardamon pods, and the dried rose petals. All that's left is waiting to add the honey and saffron, and since he's not grinding the later, he'll need to use more for flavor.

Five minutes pass and red threads of spice join the brew. Three more and honey is drizzled in and stirred.]

There. Ready.

[Part of her thinks that she ought to be silent. She’d heard somewhere that’s what you were supposed to do for those fancy tea ceremonies that lords and tea masters hosted in their palaces and thatch roofed huts… but though it’s fascinating to watch, and she still does, Konoha can’t bring herself to be that quiet. Not now, when doing so means thinking about someone who isn’t there enjoying this with them.

In between steps she asks about the food, what’s what, marveling at foreign names and bright colors, exercising her job at hosting at least in arranging plates, passing out utensils (fork? chopsticks? she brought her both), so that when the tea is ready so is the food.]

It smells amazing…

[Nothing like the green tea and barley tea she was used to, not even some of the black and herbal teas she’s been introduced to by other people since. The cups poured, she lifts one to her face and inhales, exhales with a flutter of a sigh… and takes her first sip.

Oh…]

It tastes amazing, too!

[Even in sadness, good food and drink was enough to bring a bit of luster back to her eyes, setting her cup down to clap her palms together in grateful prayer.]

Let’s eat while everything is still hot- !

[And while they did… perhaps he would tell her a bit more. About the side of Chiron maybe she didn’t know.]

[Fork helps, so does chopsticks for things like biryani, but look, the naan? The garlic naan can be used as a wrap to heap the food from the other dishes on, and then you roll it up and eat it just so---

Yes, napkins help too! It can be messy. Or you use the naan to mop and scoop up the remaining sauces and eat it that way too. Either way it's delicious.]

Yes, let's!

[And, later, as they ate... Waver's expression is steadily growing more pensive. Adrift in some memory...]

... Chiron and I never talked about the Grail Wars we were in. I wonder what he would have thought if he learned I broke apart that senseless waste of lives. I and others.

I don't regret it. [Dismantling it.] But. I still wonder...

Edited 2021-10-02 06:23 (UTC)

[Konoha is a good student... at least when it comes to this sort of arena that requires little in the way of formal memorized education she lacked growing up or cultural mores far beyond her own. She eats what he points out, combines what seems tasty, marvels at how useful the "naan" bread is as a plate, utensil, and food on its own. The spiciness isn't what she's used to, she does fan at her tongue a time or two, but it is good, and she asks questions, learns quite a lot in her crash course on Indian cuisine, including that her favorite might just be the chickpea stew, but with a mouthful of it-

Chiron's name brings her back to what the food, what Waver's presence right now, here in this barn that felt so empty by herself, meant. Slowly, she chews, listening as her spoon drifts back to the chana masala, filling it again but... not bringing it back up.]

You... you broke it?

[She doesn't know what to ask but that, to invite him to explain what he meant by that. You couldn't... break a war, could you? Did he mean the magic cup? The system that seemed so cruel, that allowed the spirits of heroes past to be summoned in the first place?

She almost hopes it's that one.]

Yes.

[And it was so costly.]

I didn't do it alone, but I dismantled the Grail and its system.

[What a simple answer to something that surely had to be insanely complicated? "Yes." She almost doesn't even know what to do with it at first, just staring at the mage across the spread of a delicious new foods.

"Dismantled"...]

Then... It's already over? Chiron- the other Servants, too... They don't have to keep being Summoned and fight anymore... ?

[Though she had found that fate cruel, from where she herself stood, from what she wanted for the man who had been a foundation and a friend in this place... How is it that when she says it out loud now she worries that it might not be relief for necessarily everyone?

Was this timelines again... ? That Lord El-Melloi (the II!) came from a time beyond what Chiron knew, or... ?]

In my timeline. I don't know about others where I'm present, but I have a feeling... well, it had to go.

[There's a heavy sigh, then. Well... he won't lie... but this won't bring much comfort, will it?]

They can't be called by the Grail and pitted against each other by mages that way anymore, no. But there are other ways they could be summoned. If they fight... that depends on the situation and people present.

There are many who really would rather not, given the chance, thankfully.

[In his timeline. Of course. There always had to be that caveat, somehow. Konoha has always struggled to make sense of things like that. It was something that literally never crossed her mind in her own world, in a life with no cause or impetus to think of time travel or parallel worlds... But here? She'd met men who claimed to come from her own world but months past her own memory... Of course it was true, somehow, but-

Her spoon clatters a little in her soup, a consequence of how her hand shakes just a little. How her shoulders hitch up, and a little sound escapes the lip she bites into as tears of relief well up in her eyes.]

So no... No more of the "command seal" things... ? The ones that make them do anything their "master" wants?

[She remembers how serious Chiron had sounded, when telling her why she couldn't serve that role for him, yet why he had to be careful in choosing who did. When he'd said that the person who tethered his existence to the world could order him to kill her, kill himself, and he would just... have to do it.

If they could still technically be summoned but have a choice, not be tied to some magic cup that would keep wiping their memories and leave them unable to rest...]

No more of having to back to that "throne" place to just... just wait instead of die properly?

[She'd never once wished for someone she cared for to be dead, not like that, but when the other option was eternal servitude and unrest...]

[Waver slowly shakes his head.]

Not when mages aren't involved. When the World summons them, they aren't bound by them.

[That isn't to say they aren't guided to outright controlled in the case of Counter Guardians, but Chiron isn't that, and Waver is picking his words carefully to be honest but to distress as least as possible.

But the Throne... well... gentle, gentle now...]

The Throne of Heroes [Or the Ring of Deterrence.] sits outside the domains of space and time. When a candidate dies, they are removed from the cycle of reincarnation and recorded there. When a Heroic Spirit is summoned, they never really leave there either. They are always anchored to that place.

That is not to say one can't be freed - I've seen it happen - just that the destruction of the Grail itself would not be enough.

I don't... I don't get it, I'm sorry.

[The World... Right, Chiron had spoken of the world as if it were... something with a mind of its own, almost. The World. The Throne. The Holy Grail. So many things that were by their very essence so beyond her... and Konoha couldn't help but feel a bit self-conscious, a bit dumb when faced with the concepts, even knowing that people in Chiron and Lord El-Melloi's worlds dedicated their whole lives to understanding it.

Still-

Konoha wasn't particularly ashamed of emotions, or displaying them... so she only makes a little effort to stop the tears from slipping out, warm on her cheeks and perhaps just a bit overdue since Chiron's departure.]

I just...

[Wished she understood if that meant the Chiron she, they, had known was gone or not. If he would ever be subjected to the cruel (by her standards) fate of being summoned and controlled only for nothing they do and no one they met to remain in their mind the next time. In that moment, she thinks of how he'd sounded, laying beside her and watching the lanterns for the dead floating off into the sky, speaking of those that had surely gone after he had left them. Remembers the vague shape of a delicate woman, fair of hair and inhumanly beautiful, before her dream memory had been rejected.]

I wish he could rest... It's not fair.

[And life wasn't fair, she knew that. But occasionally... she did shed tears for it.]

Don't be.

[It's not easy to understand. Konoha has even less background than Gray. She absolutely isn't stupid.

The only mercy and kindness the World has is of what people show each other. The systems that rule them have none. What the will of the Human Order imposes is cruel.

No Grail will fix that. There's no miracle cure. No great act of magic or deed of great man can deliver salvation.

It's in the small acts, not great sacrifices. In change, in growth, in themselves and others, passing through the ages, until that Human Order becomes something new.

And if that is even possible... it's a subject once discussed between Gray and himself, in that soot-stained church, under the gaze of the blackened Madonna. Waver doesn't know. He hasn't changed from that boy in the ways that are important. It seems as impossible as reaching that sea at the end of everything, yet it's a journey that must be made... a conquest that must be overtaken.]

No, it absolutely isn't.

[For any of them.]

I wish it could be different too.

[Sometimes... you just needed someone else to tell you that you were right. To agree, to sympathize, because... life wasn't fair. Nothing really was, in the world of mortals... and, Konoha supposed, the world of the divine didn't seem to be so different.

So it's nice... she appreciates so much that he just... just agrees. There's nothing they could do about it, nothing that would change the situation as it was now, but at least... at least they were a "they" in this moment. Unashamed, Konoha lets out a little hiccup of sound around a well of tears, trying to smile through it but struggling a little.

What else was there to say about it... ? She wished it was different. He wished it was different. Her hand leaves her spoon abandoned in her soup a moment to reach up and wipe at her cheeks, shameless herself but aware that... perhaps it put a bit much on others around her. He hadn't come here to cry, he'd come here to distract her, to talk of lyres, and-]

This Indian food stuff is really good...

[So was his company, tenuous as they were reminded their existences were in this place.]

Thank you... for bringing me some.

[But she can't let it go fully, and so as bittersweet as it might be,]

Chiron taught me how to make his homeland's food... Do you want to try some of that next time?

[She did hope there would be a next time.]

[Ah, the subject change. His smile is gentle and a bit crooked at the emotion in the room, not calling attention to her tears, because he'd not like any comment on his in his moments.]

I do.

And if you wouldn't mind, please show me how to make it. I'm not a very good cook.

[Ah, here's a distration.]

I'm just lucky Flat's not a fussy eater.

That I can do.

[It's an easy thing to offer, to someone who has come to her home to offer her comfort at a time when honestly... not many people would have likely succeeded. But Waver, he knew Chiron, it wasn't just empty platitudes or comfort... She appreciated even that, but.]

He showed me, so... I'll pass it on. Then maybe you can teach Flat...

[Or, well.]

Actually... Maybe not, he doesn't strike me as much of a cook... and I'm sure you have your hands full teaching him magic things...

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