2018-03-24: Lie of Omission
- Log: Lie of Omission
- Cast: Loren Voss, Lan Lilac
- Where: Meribia - Port District
- Date: March 24th 2018
- Summary: Lan finds a familiar face in the ports. Loren makes a proposal -- to which Lan makes a particular request.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Operation: obtain information about Lunar has not gone particularly well for Loren already. Though there's admittedly the minor successes of obtaining a few pieces of general information about recent events and confirming the presence of some of the Metal Demons of Wayside are now on the moon...
There's also the unfortunate failure of the Metal Demons of Wayside -- and SLIDE-1's pilot -- now knowing that he and thus the rest of Gebler are also present on the moon.
This could have gone better, he grouses, making his way through the port, hunched over and doing his best to keep to the periphery of the crowd. He'll need to report in and at a least let them know that things have gotten a little more complicated.
Ugh. Is this going to get added to whatever's in his service record too...
And to add insult to injury...
He had of course exchanged his uniform for something more 'normal' for the residents of Lunar. Said clothing now has the imprint of the whitewash letters of a sign emblazoned across his shirt, specifically: "MET, "Get ", and "brin".
There's also a lingering smear of whitewash across one cheek, as if someone had wiped most of it off.
Yeah, that's another thing he needs to take care of -- a change of clothing, or a laundering, or... something.
Before more people notice and laugh at him.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The moon is really weird. Lan hadn't expected it to be... well, a planet of its own, with people and a culture and everything! She supposes it just goes to show that you can't just assume that you know everything. Also, that you'll always know what plants are safe to eat. Or that your money will always be accepted.
The drifter sits on a low boundary well, what would've been a fence anywhere else, separating two arbitrary portions of the street from each other. It's kind of novel, all this temperate weather! She's even got an overshirt on, some gauzy embroidered thing that adds a few scant degrees of warmth to her tanned skin.
Lan Lilac, Baskar maiden and Totally Helpful Person, You Guys, casts her gaze out over the moon people. Not that she isn't grateful for the experience, but it sure would be nice if she actually, you know, knew anybody--- "Huh?" The blonde squints a bit at some poor moon person straggling along, splattered with what looks like paint and some kind of mooninite scrawl. What's 'MET Get brin'?
She has a handkerchief somewhere, doesn't she...? Lan searches her pockets, lavender eyes following the stranger as it comes closer. Funny, they look kind of familiar. It must be one of those... things... Doesn't she know that sour 'just bit into a lemon' expression? Lan squints harder.
Moments later, a voice rings out from across the port. "THOMAS!!!"
oh god why her, why now
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's certainly a sea change from the wastes so common to Ignas (particularly to the west) -- it's already rained several times since the day of the Tzadkiel's crash, while he's certain he could count on one hand the number of times he saw it rain back on Filgaia.
Not that it's made it any less strange -- even if he knows intellectually that rain is natural, that it's a result of the hydrologic cycle for the planet, it's still somehow odd that water can fall from the sky.
Speaking of, a downpour would be a minor blessing right now.
But above Meribia is only a clear blue. Hazily, the enormous azure sphere of Filgaia can be seen, hanging in the sky.
There has to be somewhere here where he can clean up. Or at least get aboard a ship without drawing too much more attention--
Things that aren't happening: not drawing attention.
Someone shouts from across the port. He does not, at first, lift his head -- an odd reaction for someone to have towards their own name, but perhaps he hasn't heard... her?
Or, no. He jerks his head up, swinging his attention across the port and...
Oh, why now. Why her.
He hesitates, pulling up short. Is... there anywhere he can escape to...
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Sometimes people don't react to their own names. There are a lot of Thomases, maybe they just get desensitized to the sound of it!
"Thomas!" Lan calls again, trotting across the street despite the people using it for street things like 'taking groceries home' and such. Her eyes broadcast none of his own pending anxiety - she looks positively thrilled to see him. "Hey, you're here too! Isn't the moon crazy? I mean, rain! And all the plants! I woke up in a patch of something called 'clover', can you believe it?!"
Oh yeah, Lan's happy to see Loren.
She barely even waits for him to say anything, just leans over with a hankie extended to dab at his paint splotches. "What's a MET Get brin, anyway?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Tragically, an avenue of escape never does present itself -- the crowds fail to part at critical junctures; stalls block what might otherwise be a path. Lan is easily able to trot up to him -- even if she does cause some minor consternation among the passersby in the process.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide...
"Yes, I certainly am here," he utters, venting a minor fraction of frustration as she greets him far too cheerily.
Does anyone else ever run into situations like this with Lambs? Or is it really just him??
"...Did you have something important to say?" he says, decidedly unkindly. "I was in a hurry. I--"
She dabs at the paint; he recoils from her, perhaps like a cat that doesn't want to be picked up. "--What are you doing? Don't touch me." There's a beat in the middle of this farce, wherein he blinks at her question, looks down at his shirt, and then back up at Lan.
"How should I know? It was on a sign."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It's so great to see someone she knows! Well, 'knows'. Who knows where Vin and Gwen and Josie and everybody else might be, anyway? Hopefully they're all safe and sound back on Filgaia! That's what she ought to hope for, isn't it?
It's a little lonely, but she's never alone, is she? The medium isn't as heavy as it used to be, yet somehow that's less comforting than she'd expected.
--it's a terrible thing, to be unworthy of your gods--
Lan blinks the memory away in time to hear Thomas say 'don't touch me'. Obligingly, suddenly, her hand freezes an inch from him, the ends of the handkerchief fluttering listlessly.
"...Sorry," Lan says, meeting his eyes with a sincerely apologetic gaze. "I forget sometimes that white people are different." She doesn't elaborate.
So if the words were on a sign, but are now on his shirt, does that mean that he... "Wet paint?" she asks suddenly, more shrewdly than might be expected of someone like Lan.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
She freezes. The manner of it if not the emotions fueling it are familiar, though it doesn't appear to provoke from him any glimmer of sympathy. He just raises an eyebrow at her comment of 'white people' and says nothing.
But, since she's offering, in a manner of speaking...
He does reach out to take the handkerchief from her -- assuming she lets go of it, that is.
As if he's longsuffering, Loren sighs. "Yes. Wet paint."
Also an incredibly riled up and personal-space-invading weaponsmith, but that's another story.
Emperor, he hopes that weaponsmith isn't the talkative sort. It's going to be bad enough having to do damage control on the Metal Demons and SLIDE-1's pilot without having to worry about the natives...
Their position is tenuous enough as it stands.
"Dare I ask how you got mixed up in this... mess?" Meaning, the transit to Lunar. He has his guess, but...
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She lets go. After all, she wants him to have the opportunity to clean up! That's the whole point!
Also something about blah blah missed seeing anybody she even sort-of knows, blah blah stranger in a strange land. Heh. Lan d.
Lan shrugs, taking a step back. "I found this really cool place with all these floating platforms, and thought I'd take a rest..." Then out came the bottles of cactus juice, and Lan was just so comfortable, and she forgets the rest. "But I woke up to a super bright light and this feeling like... like gravity was just a suggestion, you know?" She shrugs, not expecting Loren to really know. "And then I was in somebody's awning and they were reeeeeeeeally upset. It's not like I go around doing that all the time!"
Shoving her hands into the pockets of her shorts, Lan shrugs with just her shoulders. "So I thought maybe it was some kind of test from the Guardians, and decided I'd wait for Rigdobrite to tell me what I was supposed to do. But if you're here too, I guess it's not that simple, huh?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Handkerchief in hand, he sets about dabbing at the sections that are still a little damp. It's going to need a wash for certain, but at least this... sort of helps.
Or at least smears it around a bit.
He glances up as she regales him with her tale. Some kind of test from the Guardians...
...Ridiculous.
In fact, he says as much: "That's ridiculous. Did you really think... Oh, never mind. No, it's obviously not just you."
He's gotten more hostile lately, hasn't he?
"Something happened in those ruins, and now we're here. It's not just you or me, though. It seems a number of people have been transported to the Old Moon." He glances her over, as if to size her up. "...You haven't met any of them yet?"
...This actually could be potentially useful, he thinks belatedly. Sure, he'd be walking on thin ice -- she mentions his name to the wrong person and they'd be sure to tell her what was really going on. But in the absence of any real information network, perhaps...
"I've been trying to learn more about this place we've landed in, too. Maybe we could make an agreement -- two people can cover more ground than one."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan settles back onto her heels, lavender eyes watching Loren work. "Do you have a change of clothes?" she asks after it becomes obvious that he's only smearing things around a bit. "I have a shirt in my pack that isn't too girly," she offers. "You could borrow it."
And of course it's ridiculous, but what else could she think? Considering the last time she'd thought something was a test, she'd nearly been murdered... The puckered scar on her belly itches a little when she thinks about it.
Well, Lan can't help wanting occurences to mean something, even now.
"I haven't," the blonde shakes her head, turning to look out along the length of the street. "Even if it's been louder than usual here, according to some of the people I've talked to, they were all born here."
Tilting her head only slightly to the side, Lan lets her gaze slide across the young man. "I don't mind helping out," she tells him, hands slipping from her pockets to clasp behind her back. "If you do something for me in turn."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He pauses mid-dab, glancing down at himself, his bag, then back up and over at her. "No. I don't." He only has the essentials on him, enough to see him through traveling safely and cleanly, but not a spare shirt. ...Not the sort you'd wear during the day, at least. But he still makes a face at her suggestion. "Somehow, I doubt we're the same size," he informs her, a little flatly.
That things have meaning. Does any occurence ever mean anything?
It's... possible, he would admit, if only to himself. Even if the meaning imparts nothing well at all.
But these are concerns further and away from him right now.
"So you haven't met anyone else. Hmm. I've only met a few people, myself," he explains, a statement that's only true if you discount every single person present on the Tzadkiel. Which, apparently, he is at the moment. "I suppose it's just the luck of the draw."
He hesitates when Lan opts to play 'let's make a deal' with him, his blue eyes resting on her face as if intending to read her mind through her expression. "What's that?" he asks, figuring if nothing else he can turn it down if it's unacceptable.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"You never know what a girl's got in her bags, you know," Lan chastizes, but even that's said with that damnable cheer. "Don't assume so much!" But she lets it go. Even if she did loan him her spare shirt, that would leave her with just the clothes she's wearing. It's not an ideal situation...!
Fingers clasped, she turns to look him in the eyes, meeting him with the candid expression of someone who knows what you're doing, young man. "It's really simple," she tries to reassure him. "If we're going to work together, can you act a little less like being around me is physically painful for you?"
Well, there's that out in the open...
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
To be honest, he... wouldn't know?
He slowly exhales a breath as she continues talking, maintaining a particular brightness that's intensely alien to him. How some people manage to be so cheerful, he doesn't know.
But there's the matter of the promise, in the meantime.
She looks him back with a startling -- to him, that is, from the perspective of someone of his own origin -- degree of awareness to what he's seeking from her, and in the most reassuring of tones, asks him to act less like he's...
He rolls back from her a touch, staring at her as if she's just sprouted another head. "...Excuse me?"
Is he... really that self-unaware?
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She just lifts her eyebrows a scant millimeter. "You're not exactly subtle, you know? It's okay that you're kind of..." Lan trails off, trying to find the right word. "...Uptight," she continues after a moment's thought, "But can you be less rude to me?"
Privately, she wonders if it's because she's a Baskar. But normally outsiders don't have any beef with them...! So maybe it's something else. She's never seen him interact with other people, after all.
Lan unclasps her hands and wanders a few feet away to sit on top of a low wall, beckoning Loren to follow her. "Don't look so surprised," she stifles a laugh. "Were you really concentrating on something else?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"You're not exactly subtle," she informs him, a statement that prompts him to look, well, mildly offended. He glances down at himself, as if to take in his own stance and body language, then shakes his head. "I only say what I mean," he says, as though this explains it. "Are you asking me to lie to you?"
To be fair, perhaps, Loren's social scripts for interactions roughly run a gamut from 'fearful politeness' to 'naked disdain' and the degree to which these apply to any given person largely depends on whether or not they're wielding significant social rank over him and what he needs from them.
Lan, at this moment, manages to fall into one of the categories best labeled '???'.
She walks away, indicating he should follow. This is the point where he glances away from her, as if debating again vanishing into the crowd.
But, this isn't what he does, largely because -- here he shakes his head, berating himself mentally before he turns to follow after -- they technically do need whatever handhold up they can on Lunar. And if it's a helpful Filgaian Lamb...
A saying about gift horses may apply here.
"Were you really concentrating on something else?"
"...I don't follow," says the young man who has never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Rest assured, Lan doesn't even begin to suspect Loren of focusing on that particular 'set' of her assets. Usually when people are focused on those they're much nicer to her.
Lie to her, though...? She pauses to think about it, tilting her head a few degrees as if to regard him from a new angle. "Maybe just a lie of omission?" Lan offers at last. "If you're going to say something that might hurt my feelings and isn't super important, maybe keep it to yourself?" Surely that's a good compromise! "You just seem anxious or something," she follows up. "Or if you're not anxious, just... prickly. It's like trying to pat a cactus. I try to be nice, but I just get hurt in return."
It's not a perfect metaphor, but Lan is fairly certain there's a grain of truth there!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He follows her, but he doesn't sit, standing as if he's uncomfortable with the whole situation.
Which, well. He is.
Maybe keep it to yourself, she suggests. He pulls a faintly sour look, closes his eyes, and folds his arms over his chest, silent for now.
Maybe he was wrong about thinking it was 'easier' to fit in with Lambs. It seems they can be just as difficult as Solarians.
"Hmph... At least generally people stop trying to touch a cactus after the first time they're hurt..." he mutters, which, well, probably isn't aligning well with her request that he be less of a caustic ass to her. He exhales a breath, considering his options.
Today's been a near-disaster by almost all metrics. He should at least try, if this was the only thing he needed to pay out in exchange for what's needed.
"Fine. I'll try, but I'm not making any promises. This is who I am," he informs her, unfolding his arms and glancing over at her.
Then down at himself, surreptitiously. ...At least the paint's dry, or he would have just made a grave error crossing his arms just now.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Generally people stop trying to touch a cactus after the first time they're hurt. Lan can't help breaking into laughter, which certainly can't help Loren's sense of understanding the situation. Maybe all Lambs are just this frustrating...!
"Yeah, but isn't being a cactus a bit lonely?" she finally manages to ask, resting her palms to either side of her hips on the wall. Now who's assuming things? "I'm not asking you to change who you are," she explains patiently. "Just to take my feelings into account. You wouldn't like it if people were always rude to you, would you?" she asks from the ever-infuriating position of total, innocent, ignorance.
If only she knew.
"But in any case, what are you looking for when you say 'cover ground'? What are you looking for, exactly?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Ugh, now she's laughing. His shoulders tense, irritation prickling in like a shroud over everything else he feels right now.
He'd forgotten how frustrating they can be when they're so inclined.
"If it's used to it, does it matter?" he asks, shaking his head. Only to heave out a breath, as if in some measure of disbelief. "...I can't believe we're talking about this. Of all the ridiculous..." At least he trails off, as if aware of the discouraged route this is taking him down.
If people were always rude to him...
Too late for that, he thinks darkly. He shakes his head, doesn't offer a word of comment otherwise on the topic.
"What am I looking for? Understanding this world and the people in it." He pauses. "And a way back."
It's omitting the important details, but it's still a truth, if seen from a particular point of view.
Understand this world so they can survive. Learn about the people so they can use them. Find what they need and take it.
Then leave this world -- return. Back to Filgaia, at least.
But not 'home', as he thinks of it.
...Has it already been a year since he left?
His expression grows somewhat strained as his thoughts alight onto newer ground. Do his parents think he's dead? What does anyone think happened...
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
If she really understood how he felt, or what was clinging to him...
Well, Lan would be kinder to him. He might hate it even more than he does her laughter.
"So basically the most important things," Lan hums, looking out across the street. "I guess we should go back, but... it's nice, seeing what Filgaia could be. Green and healthy." Maybe she can take some of this back with her, somehow. Bottle it up and pour it out into the badlands until the land starts to heal.
Yeah, and maybe she'll be welcomed back into her village with open arms. As if!
"Well then, I guess I'll get started," she sighs, pushing off of the wall. "I think I can find a job and pick up some of this 'gold-silver-whatever' stuff. Can you believe they don't know what gella are? The moon is crazy."
Lan hikes a thumb toward the edge of town. "I'm camping over there, underneath a big tree with pink flowers on it. If you want that shirt after all, come find me. Okay? I'll see you around, Thomas~"
And with a shallow reflection of that sunny smile from before, Lan saunters off into the crowd.