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[lumberlady]

« konoha » TEXT ✧ AUDIO ✧ VIDEO ✧ ACTION KONOHA ✦ JINBA
RESIDENCE ✦ Emerald Park
GEMBOND ✦ Emerald

"Ah, am I doing this right... ? Hello! This is Konoha! Please 'leave a message'!"

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[lumberlady]

[It could be argued that Konoha was an open book most any day… it’s a credit to the strength of an everapple that she’s somehow more easy to read under its influence, the emotions soft and rounded, such simple things to manipulate or prod in the direction one wished.

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.]

[greenbriar]

[ He watches her come to. Resignation and anxiety churn inside him, at odds with each other. He's not sure if moving back to his seat will make things worse, and so he doesn't, only leaning against the table as he waits. For the first few moments he watches her, and then realizes he's staring, and looks off into the distance instead.

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. ]

[lumberlady]

[Outwardly, the change is subtle. Inwardly... how strange it seems to Konoha now, to realize that just a minute or so past she would have been willing to do anything Cardan asked her. More importantly... she feels like she might have been willing to do anything anyone asked her. And though she might appear to some to be too trusting, perhaps naive...

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.]

[greenbriar]

[ In a way, Cardan is relieved. He doesn't know what he expected from her reaction, not exactly, not insofar as he wants to give his thoughts shape. But to him, this is still better than anger, or disgust. Disappointment... is familiar. Whom in his life has he not disappointed?

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.

[lumberlady]

[In her everapple drunkenness, Konoha’s upset over Cardan’s physical distance had been far more pure, the simple longing of a friend who hated that they couldn’t do anything to convey themselves properly when words just kept not being enough. After, though… there had been another reason she insisted on still getting his hand in hers, and that was because… she might need it. Synchrony, and the glimpse into his emotions it might provide if only their bodies remembered how much they had shared before.

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… ?

[greenbriar]

[ I don't think you're difficult to love at all. His sharp inhale is painful in his own lungs. It's difficult, not to respond -- difficult not to contradict her, because he knows that he's prickly and cruel and obstinate even on a good day. The evidence is right here, staining her wrist with sticky golden juice.

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... ]

[lumberlady]

[Konoha might be mortal, able to lie as easily as breathe if she wanted to... But she doesn't want to. She's never wanted to, and by blessing of caring hands that had taken her from a corpse's arms, she's never really had to. There's no doubt that she means what she says.

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.]

[greenbriar]

[ He tenses for a moment when he feels her pull him in -- both confused and uncomfortable. With how absolutely mortifying this is, the last thing he wants is to be up close. He didn't mean to cry. He didn't mean to make this-- so...

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. ]

[lumberlady]

[They are close enough now that Konoha can smile, tremulous and shaky, without him being able to see... but for some reason, she feels like Cardan might be able to sense it anyway, because by tapping into his manna in an attempt to read his mood a bit better, she has opened herself up to the same. Including the way her hearts swell when she feels him mimic her gesture.

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.]

[greenbriar]

[ There is an odd calm in his heart where hurt and anger and fear had been just minutes prior -- a sort of clarity that's come to him, despite himself. How could he have been so foolish? Konoha is here, and even without the warm, glittering link of Synchrony between them, he would know her affection and her acceptance. It is as certain and true as the skies above them.

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. ]