2018-05-06: Behaved That Irrationally
- Log: Behaved That Irrationally
- Cast: Loren Voss, Lan Lilac
- Where: Road Outside Vane
- Date: May 6th 2018
- Summary: After escaping the depths of the forest in which he had a violent encounter with Cassidy, Loren meets an unexpected person on the road. Lan explains it to him like he's five. Loren is driven to drink.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Exiting the forest in the end is trickier business than was entering it.
'Cassidy Cain' had not been lying in the slightest when she had mentioned that the forest residents were attracted to the smell of blood. With the stuff staining his jacket and shirt, and between what had been shed onto the forest floor, it's actually a minor miracle that he had been able to collect his belongings before the creatures of the forest had descended upon him.
He didn't even manage to get any significant samples before his encounter with... that woman, let alone from the strange creatures that had rushed him afterwards.
There's still enough time that he might be able to make a later return, but...
He heaves out a sigh outside the forest and sits down -- certain he's well enough clear of the probably-rabid 'animals' that thrived in its depths -- upon a rock near a bent and faded signpost.
This might have once been a road marker, before Vane fell from importance. It's hard to read what it says on it, and he's not particularly interested in looking at it. He knows already where he's going.
The blood staining his white jacket -- at front and back, though only the front is currently visible from where he's seated -- has partially dried, now a dull muddy red in color.
Damn that woman.
He'd botched the mission, broken equipment, been bested by a Lamb... and for what? The sole hit he'd managed to land on her? He can say 'it was because she compromised his identity' but if he's honest, it's been compromised for some time already.
...
He picks at the front of his jacket and exhales an irritated breath. Maybe he's overthinking it all...
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It's been too long.
It's stupid to even think that, isn't it? Despite looking pretty wimpy, Lan knows Thomas can probably hold his own. The moon doesn't even seem all that dangerous compared to Filgaia, at least as long as you stay out of the ruins. What had Ashansi said the last time they'd seen each other...?
...Huh, she can't remember now. But surely it must have been something sort of comforting. Surely it must have been good advice.
But advice won't help her if she can't remember it, and she can't make sure Thomas is okay if she can't find him. Thus, she'd resorted to creating one of her village's most ancient tools to hurry things up.
Now she hurries along the road. The oracle paper had said he was this way, and that he was injured. Lan doesn't know how much time she may have left--
--So when he sees her in the distance, Loren may be much less glad to see Lan than she is to see him. "THOMAS!" the blonde calls to him, sandals pounding on the road. "What happened to you?! Why're you just sitting there bleeding?!"
She's barely pulled to a stop before Lan's digging out her canteen and some supplies.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It isn't as if the clothing can't be replaced. It isn't as if the wounds can't be healed (and are, all clothing evidence to the contrary, already largely handled minus the aspects of injury that rest has to account for).
What's more difficult is accounting for naked failure. What's more difficult is managing shame. What's more difficult is knowing he's come up short.
That he's behaved that irrationally.
It's going to be difficult to account for this.
Maybe it's better if he doesn't.
...Is this lying?
--Further brooding, in the wake of the consideration even that he's considering this too deeply, is cut short by the sound of a shout and running feet.
He's got other things to worry about in short order.
Specifically, managing Lan.
"What-- what are you-- where did you--"
He's risen to his feet, leaving his bags behind as he backs away. Sputtered statements are joined as she closes on him with attempts to evade her attention.
Oh, Emperor. Just what he needs.
"It's not as bad as it looks!" says the young man with the front and back of his jacket covered in dried blood.
He glances down at himself as if in belated consideration of his exact physical state.
"It's... er..."
He hesitates.
"Not... my blood...?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
He doesn't seem quite as relieved to see her as most people would be if they were bleeding to death on a strange planet, but then Thomas has always been weird. After a few weeks of traveling with him, however, Lan seems to be getting the hang of dealing with him. She pulls a roll of bandages from her pack to set out next to the canteen (not her apparently-precious jug of special hippie water or whatever's in there) and a small jar.
"If it's not your blood, I'd hate to see the other guy," she sighs, clapping both hands together. Is this how faith healing starts? Is she going to lay hands on him?!
Judging by the fact that he can not only get up and move around but also protest that he's fine... well, Lan definitely doesn't buy that, but Thomas has always been notoriously prickly. She doesn't want to start an argument. If he passes out from blood loss in the future, Lan will worry about it then.
Still, she's silent for a long span of moments, looking at him with those strange eyes. "...Do you have spare clothes to wear?" she asks instead of attempting to wrestle him into a set of bandages or something.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Save for the cut on one cheek (overlooked, since he had enough time to tend to the more serious injuries by turns (and he's still not entirely certain if he fixed his lung properly, but he hasn't had breathing issues so it might be able to get by) before the animals of the forest made their arrival) and the bloodying on the sleeves (thanks to said animals and a somewhat hurried flight from the forest) it might almost be tempting to take him at his word.
He's certainly lively-looking for a man with that much blood on him. Perhaps paler than usual, but that one's a harder one to tell, given how pale he is already.
The other 'guy' in this case probably got the better end of the deal...
"Listen, I have no idea what you think happened, but..."
He pauses, as if sizing her up.
"...How did you even know I was here? I didn't tell anyone."
Other than Command, who gave the orders in this case.
She's looking at him like that. "Yes?"
They're not much -- shirt, pants, since he'd been aiming to travel light in case any samples were not-so-light, but as that hasn't happened...
"I'm not sure what you think's happened. I'm perfectly--"
To recap, up until this moment, the following has happened:
Loren engaged in a pitched fight with Cassidy and suffered several wounds, most of which he treated*.
Loren had enough time to collect his belongings.
Loren was then assaulted by wildlife** and had to flee.
Loren, until moments ago, was seated down for actually very practical reasons.
(because: *bloodloss ensued and **bloodloss ensued)
THe presence of that tilted faded sign suddenly becomes less of an indicidental and far more practical, as he seems to stumble and grabs onto it for support.
Blinking away the specks of black that dance before his vision, he just looks at her, his face a carefully neutral mask, and sits himself back down by the roadside.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The look she gives him is frankly a little exasperated. "Why are people like this so often?" she wonders out loud, but Lan doesn't really seem to expect an answer from him. "You could be dying with a sword through your gut..."
--only it wasn't a sword, it was his hand, his hand that shoved inside and reached--
Now it's Lan's turn to go a bit grey, but she clenches her fists until her nails cut pink lines into her palms and the memory of 'nononono' can be choked back down. "...You'd still shove me away, wouldn't you?" she manages to finish, though the words aren't as vehement as they'd been when she started.
He lists to one side, and Lan's already lunging forward to catch him when she slows down. He's caught himself, if just barely. Instead, she settles down to sit on the ground across from him, and tugs the special waterjug from its place at her hip. "Drink," Lan tells him tiredly. "I worried about you so I asked the wind to help me find you. I am a shaman, remember?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The look he gives her is a decidedly odd one, somewhat flat, somewhat uneasy.
The fact is, he has had a sword through the gut. It was unpleasant and he almost died! Though, arguably, the fact that he almost drowned shortly after also probably complicated the whole 'survive an impaling' business.
But that's an interesting reaction she has, in the same heartbeat. He might have spent his adolescence as a pariah of sorts, but that made it all the more important to read other people ahead of time -- it was always best to know if you were about to be under attack.
Here, deadpan, he lifts an eyebrow. "Do you really think I'd rather die? I'm not in any danger."
Said moments before his body betrays him and he almost faints on the roadside (as if he hasn't had enough mortal injury to his pride today).
It must be the adrenaline. It must have run down by now, comparatively...
Still holding into the signpost -- he hasn't shrugged his way free of Lan's grasp -- he bows his head and just maintains breath after steady slow breath. Halfway nausea, halfway chill -- the body has its own thoughts about the bloodloss he's suffered today and has made its public statement that it doesn't care for it much.
Time to slow down a few days after all, huh...
He lifts his head at short length.
"You asked the wind to..."
As he actually parses the rest of what she's said, he pauses, as if some internal process has decided to hang.
"You were... what?"
Worried about him.
"..."
It's actually a relief that she's offered him something to drink. It's better than even attempting to think about what she's just said.
(If she's not careful, he might just chug it.)
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
You can't tell with some people! Lan once heard a story from an uncle about an old man that was so proud he refused any help and when a tornado came through... well, there were always two endings, either the man still refused help and couldn't escape in time, or his neighbors assumed he wouldn't let them evacuate him and he died anyway. It was no good, no matter which way the story went!
"You might not know you were dying," she counters rationally. "Not until you woke up dead. And then what would happen!? Some things can't be taken back." She lets him drink as much as he wants to - there's not enough water in there to hurt him, and she can always get more. "Go a little slower, okay," she frowns.
While he's drinking, she makes sure he's propped up securely against the signpost and fishes around underneath her shirt. The thing she draws out is a medium, heavy and old. "I asked the wind to help me find you," Lan repeats, as if telling the story to a child, "Because I was worried about you. We've been traveling together for a while now." Is that really all it takes for Lambs, after all?
"Hold still, I'll try to help a little. O you of endless starlight," she murmurs, rubbing her thumbs meditatively against the metal. "O you of infinite wishes." She doesn't need to say those words, but they feel right to her - she's asking for a favor every time she uses magic, so a little respect/flattery is the least she can give in return.
Mist shimmers lazily about her, magic seeking to finish up any healing left undone by his own ether use. "Let my hands be more than weapons. Let my voice bring comfort."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He less-than-kindly sighs at her verbal counter blow, shaking his head. "I'd like to think I'd notice," he comments dryly, before looking away from her. "Hmph. 'Wake up dead'. Now that would be a first..."
There are things that can't be taken back. Most assuredly.
He learned that once more today. The evidence is in his bag, wrapped loosely in the spare clothing.
THe eases up on downing the whole thing in one go, at least. Bad enough, probably, the insult his lungs already received today -- no sense adding injury to it and inhaling water by accident.
...He doesn't understand Lambs. It's tempting to think they trust that easily because they're a fallen people, but he knows, he knows they're capable of terrible canniness -- they should know better.
This one's already more observant than he'd thought -- already a problem if he doesn't watch himself around her. She should know better. And yet.
He sets the bottle down. "And it answered? Or did you just think that it answered? It's only a flow caused by solar heating and the rotation of..."
She repeats the rest of her comment as well.
He fixes her with the exact same look someone might use upon sighting a strange new species, something familiar yet most decidedly unknown. "..."
At length he finds his voice again, looking away from her. "...You're a strange girl, do you know that? It hasn't been that long."
It's a medium. Similar enough at a glance to the thing wrapped in cloth and tucked away in the depths of his bag -- the thing he hasn't been able to throw away or bring himself to look at again. He'd met the Guardians. It had been strange -- at the time, at least, when he had been in their presence, had felt judged.
...But they weren't really gods. Just some life forms that had gotten delusions of grandeur, perhaps. Powerful, worth using in the struggle to maintain the precarious balance of the dying planet, but ultimately just...
He still hasn't been able to throw away the marker of their wish for aid.
He doesn't say anything as she intones the words of that incantation. Primitive magic at best, he thinks, requires a focus and 'prayer' to use. He leans against the signpost, closing his eyes.
It feels different. There's none of that sense of 'fulling together' or 'reinforcement' that he knows from his own power. Instead, it's as if a cool breeze has touched where the flesh felt burned and...
There and gone, like a breath.
"...Interesting spell," Loren comments at last, cracking open an eye.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Did it answer? Lan looks at him like he's kind of an idiot. "Of course it did, or I wouldn't have asked in the first place." Duh! City people are so weird. "It doesn't matter whether or not you believe in spirits. They're everywhere if you know how to listen."
The medium is put away again, in whatever mysterious place Lan keeps it. She always seems to hide it - even from him. "You keep telling me that," the blonde remarks, perhaps a touch wryly. "But to me, you're the strange one. I suppose it's because you grew up in a city... Even I can't always hear the spirits when everything's so crowded together. I went to June City once and there was the most uncomfortable hum, one tht reached all the way to my bones. It has to be something the do with the Plants," she muses, half to herself. "It's only ever happened in those places."
He cracks an eye open. Lan just looks back at him, meeting his eyes with that unreadable expression of hers, like she's listening to someone whispering secrets about him. "It's not too hard. I bet even you could do it," she says blithely, and takes the empty jug from him to cap and put away. "It just takes sincerity." She's not sure when he'll be ready to move again, but Lan is patient. "Do you want to eat at an inn? Otherwise, I think I can catch us a rabbit for dinner. You should eat meat to help replace the blood you lost."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's like trying to argue with a rock, he thinks, gazing back at her with a look of muted disbelief. "Right. Of course there is. How silly of me."
However badly he was hurt, it apparently wasn't hard enough to knock the sass out of him.
He straightens against the signpost, propping himself up somewhat.
"Hmph. Fair enough," he allows, apparently content to leave the matter of cities, the Baskar, and their relative strangeness to one another where it is for once. There isn't even a smart comment coming, it seems.
I wonder what you'd 'hear' in Etrenank, he thinks.
And instead simply comments: "I've heard rumors about the Plants. Some strange ancient technology, or something of that nature... Whatever it is, I heard they don't talk much about it."
But even that settles by the wayside once they share a look.
And there in the end is the smart remark:
"When you put it that way, it almost sounds like encouragement," he replies, the sarcasm strong with this one.
He has a little more color back, at least -- it's not enough to entirely bridge the gap that's ensued from earlier fluid loss, but it's good enough for now. A couple days of lighter exertions, some iron-rich food, capped with the addition of the supplement pills buried in the depths of his bag, and he should be fine, all considering. He absently touches where he'd taken a heavy blow from an apparently mad deer to his right forearm, seeking out the periphery of the wound.
...So it's not there at all anymore?
That's what he'd thought, but it's still...
...interesting, to confirm it.
"Do you know a place? It would be better to sleep in a bed," which is true, after the day he's had.
He still needs to sift through the pieces of it.
You broke it, you know.
Yeah, the other half of him replies, far less heated now. Yeah, I did...
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Even worse, it's like trying to argue with a rock that sometimes makes really good points and has good advice!
But it turns out that there's something so weird and secret that neither of them know about it. "I asked around, but nobody would tell me what the Plants really... are. Not even what kind of fuel they use. I can't even tell if it's magic or not," she sighs. It's a little frustrating! Oh well, as long as she doesn't spend too much time in any of the Seed Cities it shouldn't concern her too much...
"If you want to learn, I'll try to teach you," she offers, though Lan doesn't believe for a second that he does. It's be like him trying to offer to show her how to use a gun or something - their interests just don't quite overlap. "But for tonight, let's just take it easy and be glad we're both alive, okay?" Lan turns to look down the road, toward Vane. "There's a place over there, the Laughing Warthog or something," it was definitely not that but she can't remember the real name, "That was pretty nice! And you can even get beer if you know where to look!" Apparently satisfied, she stands up and brushes the seat of her shorts off. "It's not far. We don't have to go fast."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Teach him? That offer prompts him to arch one blond eyebrow. He'd been lead to believe based on intelligence reporting that it was something more akin to a religious practice mixed with a focus (and possibly involving the intercession of a powerful energy lifeform, but who's counting there). "I'll think about it," he tells her, before he slowly, carefully begins to get to his feet.
He's a medic -- he knows it's possible to get lightheaded again (particularly now that it's happened), and he'd like to prevent any further injury to his person (and his ego) this day.
But other than a brief moment of lightheadedness -- which passes, as the word 'brief' would indicate -- it seems that whatever precipitated his earlier spell has begun to pass. Maybe it was exacerbated by dehydration.
Readjusting his glasses, he still leans against the signpost as Lan points off in the direction she'd come and discusses the condition of the inn.
I suppose on the moon, I'll be lucky if they have an outhouse, he thinks, shaking his head at the idea of it.
Then again, it's the inn or sleeping on the side of the road again.
"I think I'll pass on the beer. Isn't it illegal around here?"
(Not in Vane it isn't)
Yet he also breathes out a sound that might almost be a ghost of a laugh. "I think I'll survive long enough to make it to Vane. Why don't you lead?"
That was... almost nice for a moment, there. For him, at least.