2018-11-24: In Which Nobody Sees London

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  • Log: In Which Nobody Sees London
  • Cast: Isiris Shango'Ra, Lan Lilac
  • Where: An inn in Arctica
  • Date: November 24, 2018
  • Summary: Lan refuses to give in to Ashansi's demands to find the fiends who stole their money (and Ashansi's pants).

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

 
  "Urgh... oh man.."

  He wakes up outside, as he does from time to time. Immediately, Ashansi the Cavalier becomes aware of a few salient points of interest. One is that he has a headache. Two is that he seems to have misplaced his pants. Three is that it is quite cold. Luckily, in his learned opinion, he is quite focused and concentrated in cold environments. He is a veritable detective supreme in these kinds of situations. For example, he ascertains quite quickly that he spent most of the night in a tree.

  He figures that out quite quickly indeed, after he spits out a mouthful of dirt.

  Picking himself up off the ground, he looks around himself, "what a good night," he decides somewhat arbitrarily, checking for his sword absently, and making sure he's still at least wearing his boots and tunic. Good enough for government work. He seems to be outside the inn, at least, and from what he remembers .... uh, best not to mention it, one supposes. Hey, there's even the jug of ale he had! Why is it stuck halfway through the tree? Hmm. He checks his satchel, slung across his waist still, quite artfully placed. "Hmn," he considers absently. "I guess we'll have to replace the innkeep's tree... where is the money from the last... huh..."

  Pat. Pat pat. Oh. Er.
  "...."

  That was about two minutes ago.

  It's not very long before Ashansi chops into their inn room with one mighty swing, taking the door off the hinges and sticking it hopelessly to the end of Penumbra, "LAN!!!" He shouts vividly. "Get up, we've been robbed! The fiend took my pants and our money! Justice needs to be served warmly!!" he trumpets, holding his door sword high.

  "Also," he declares, "I will need to borrow some pants!"

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
After a few truly memorable hangovers, she's getting better at 'not letting Ashansi's enthusiasm get the best of her'. Lan set a number of drinks and stuck to it!

...Of course, that number was also four, which isn't particularly few nor many.

That's why Lan is asleep in their room at the inn and not in part of the landscape. There is a terrible crash right in front of her bed, which should be /sacred/ because how often does someone like Lan get to spend the night in a real bed?! Not often!

She's buried under a quilt and a couple of pillows, one tan foot sticking out from beneath the covers to hang over potential monster territory. The /crash/ makes the entire blanketlump jump, Lan soon finding the edge of the blanket to throw off of herself. "Ashaaaaaa, what the hell, it's barely morning...!" She rubs sleep from her eyes, blearily staring at him from underneath her bedhead and refusing to relinquish the last few scraps of sleep she can hang on to.

Huh? "Huh? Pants? Money?" What...?

Lan sits up in bed, eyeballing the door and Ashansi's tunic and /not/ his lack of pants. Even if she can't see anything, it's just... don't /just/ take your pants off, god!! Who does that?! "Put the door back! Your pants are in the bathtub and /I've/ got the money. You're gonna get us kicked out again!" she warns him, tugging the covers up to her shoulders.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  It's probably for the best Lan doesn't look too closely at the accuser.
  When he swings, he makes a huge updraft, you see.

  The deep bass sound of metal sluicing air one way to the other fills the tiny inn room as Ashansi politely moves the door out of the way of their conversation, sense of decency bedamned when the dastardly robbers are on his mind. "Yeah!" he says, striding across the room in solid confident steps as he opens a drawer, while Lan is still waking up. He starts opening drawers, "the fools, they don't know that I'm the best tracker/ranger they will ever have the misfortune to rob. I've already determined that they drank all of our ale, as well. All of it Lilac. All of it! Come on, let's get dressed."

  He moves to reach in a drawer to ostensibly grab a fistful of clothes, but then he catches a glimpse at the last second, defeated almost immediately by an invisible repulsion field. Jumping back from the drawer as if he had just tried to grab a live rattlesnake, the door that's still being impaled by his sword almost knocks over the lamp by the bed, sending the entire lamp wobbling off and away from him in his haste. He really is taking up a whole lot of room in there.

  More importantly, um.
  "Listen, I don't know which of these is going to give you the best armor against robber knives," Ashansi finally decides, side-stepping the whole matter neatly by removing the drawer wholesale from the dresser, clothes and all, and dropping it on the bed, ostensibly somewhere in the process of Lan's explanation. Which he pretty much is listening to. "Bathtub?" he asks, suspiciously.

  "They put my pants in the bathtub? Those bastards. They aren't cursed by ghosts or anything? I can't beat a ghost half-cocked like this," he says, finally just flicking Penumbra over a shoulder, causing the huge sword to twirl across the room, finally landing on the edge of the door, the weight of Ashansi's throw sufficient to slam the door shut, albeit completely upside down, the knob comically high on the door. The sword is still sticking out of it at an odd angle. "And you can't blame the last one on me," Ashansi grouses. "That was entirely due to that giant siege turtle. And robbers this time! It's not my fault everybody wants our lucky charms," Ashansi says, without an ounce of irony. Or chastity.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

Terrible things have been seen that cannot be unseen.

Lan squints at him in the early morning light. The first time this had happened, she thought he was screwing with her. If only it were that simple! "You drank all the ale, though," she points out, watching him rampage through the dresser - and hastily moving her toes out of the way when he drops an entire drawer on the bed.

The door does get put back, however. Maybe nobody will notice for a little while. She just wants to sleep a little longer! Lan heaves the drawer off the side of the bed and onto the floor, landing it without making too much noise all things considered. "Yeah, the bathtub--" He's off and running already. "/YOU/ put your pants in the bathtub to wash them, and then you hung them on the edge to dry. Nobody took your pants. Nobody steals pants!"

She doesn't want to just turn him loose on the town when he's having one of his moments, but she doesn't want to get out of bed... hmmm.

"Asha, listen. If you promise to leave the sword /next/ to the bed this time you can get in here next to me. Look, it's all warm." Lan unearths an entire arm just long enough to fluff the covers at him. "I promise I won't try to spoon you again."

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  Ashansi is completely inconsolable by the time Lan chucks the dresser drawer off of the bed, "/I/ drank all the ale?" the cavalier echoes incredulously. "That doesn't even sound like me," he remarks, more than a little suspicious. "Burglars frame innocent swordsmen all the time. It's true. Then the swordsmen chop them in twain -- even truer. But only if we get going forthright. Listen, forget the pants, we don't even have a moment to waste," he decides, turning from the bed back towards the door, his sword embedded in it. The chase is on!!

  At least until she brings up his pants, and their true location. That does sound kind of familiar. "Well, they could have been underwear thieves who missed," Ashansi protests. ".....but I /do/ like clean pants," he considers carefully. It checks out.
  The case goes deeper.

  "Okay, so maybe I stole my own pants," Ashansi begins to theorize, sitting down on the edge of the bed, conveniently proffered. "In a cunning gambit to make sure I know to get on the bandit's trails. Ugh, this bed is pretty warm," he grouses absently, nettled and patting a cheek. "And it's still kind of cold out," he notes, very aware, smoothing out his scarf with some noticable distress. He's staring at his sword in the door.

  "Listen, okay, we'll do this your way. But it's just because I like to be warm, and for no other reason, got it? I haven't forgotten the bandits. I'm just going to strategize here for a minute. It's definitely not going to turn out like it did with the rabbits..."

  It wasn't too long ago, that.

  ~~ Hup! Chop. Hup! Chop. "God, do you people ever run out of wood?!"

  Ashansi is in the middle of the grass field out in the rabbit village, where he is standing in the middle of a group of very short beastmen. Somewhat contrary to the village's billing, the group is part bunnies and part catmen. There are a few others, like mice-looking guys and very small crocodiles, but they are generally either wearing Rabbit or Cat Ears to fit in. However, it seems like they're in the middle of making firewood for the winter, and several of them are stacking bits of wood on a stump for Ashansi to chop, to a tight rhythm.
  By the time Lan got there to find him, they had built up quite a pile of firewood. And that was probably not even the first task they put him on. ~~

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
He glances at the door. Lan watches him through bleary eyes. "That sounds an awful lot like you, since you did the same thing less than a month ago. And you do like clean pants." It's seriously one of his greatest saving graces.

"You got absolutely wasted last night, then you washed your pants in the bathtub before I got to take a bath, which seems unfair, and then you went outside to fight a tree and I went upstairs to sleep." That's how Lan remembers it, and she drank less than he did. That means she's more honest, or something. However it works.

The bed /does/ look cozy. Lan knows this because she may have squealed quietly yesterday evening at the sight of that fluffy blanket. It's part of why she absolutely refuses to get up and forsake its heavenly comfort!!

Screw that! They paid for this room!

"You can go get bandits later," Lan tells him plainly, scooting over to one side of the mattress. "But I want to be warm now." There's a nice warm spot right in the middle of the bed, half-vacated, and if Ashansi hurries he can get in on that action. If he tilts off at windmills or cats or whatever, he's going to have to do it in the morning cold.


<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  "Impossible," Ashansi counters.
  "If I fought the tree, the tree wouldn't still be standing."

  Ashansi lays back with a fierceness on the bed, as if he could prove his point physically. Luckily, he isn't very particular about where he's sleeping, and doesn't put up a huge fight for pillows or anything, moving one boot ahead of the other until he can occupy a small miracle called 'a very cozy spot near the middle of the bed. Out of more than a modicum of respect he has for his travelling companion, he bunches up the blankets ahead of him, folding and rolling them towards Lan until he can make do with a cozy spot, dangling the heels of his fighting boots off the edge of the bed and laying his head back on his folded hands.

  It would be slightly uncomfortable for anyone who did not just wake up in a tree.

  "At any rate, you don't need a bath, you stay clean by some Baskar dirt banishing ritual, don't you?" he asks mildly, his voice growing a little less visibly anxious. She tells him she wants to be warm now, and he thinks on it for a moment, growing quiet for only as long a time as it takes the thought to unspool in his mind, threaded to the fine point of his attention.

  "Hey, Lan.... why did you even come back for me? I mean, after we left that place with all the crazy goddess worshippers, that is. I mean. You coulda just forgot all about me. That other guy... he seems like the moneybags type. I know he can't be any kind of real adventurer. But maybe with a little training, you know, he could be? And then you'd be rich. And you wouldn't have to worry about slumming it anymore. You could maybe get a house somewhere where it's always warm and sunny."

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
Lan holds her hands up in a gesture of 'peace, peace'. "I'm just repeating what happened! What I /thought/ happened, I guess." Even if they're talking about two different trees, letting him think about fighting stuff is a surefire way to get dragged on an adventure. And that's /fine/, but not /yet/.

She waits long enough to make sure he's at least /partially/ comfortable- you never can tell with Ashansi - before shoving half of the blanket at him. "Just take your boots off and put your feet under the covers if you feel like it. If you get a cold-- What! I bathe every chance I get!" There's no such thing as magical dirt repelling rituals! Her room would have been a lot cleaner, growing up.

Under the covers she's got on two shirts and a pair of loose drawstring pants. Once she's satisfied that he plans to stay here, out of trouble, Lan relents and crawls back under her own half of the blanket. With her head resting on the pillow, she turns to watch him as he tries to put feelings into words. "What do you mean?" she asks him after a moment's quiet. "Why would I forget about you?" The thought raises an uncomfortable sensation in the back of her head. She tries to ignore it.

all your cities lie in dust, my friend

Lan blinks and buries half of her face in the pillowcase. "Mmf. I travel with you because I like you. I travel with you because I want to. It's always been as simple as that." Asha is fun, and strong, and chivalrous in his own weird way - one that never entirely coddles her, one that always seeks to make her stronger. Loren is...

"You mean Loren, right?" she asks him, eyes gentle. It's so strange. Asha is strong, and fearless, and when he talks about whatever this is... He seems so shy.

"I don't want to buy a house. I think you're worrying about something that isn't there," she confides in him, lying there next to him on her side. "You know he doesn't like me like that. I don't like him like that. He's just..." She searches for the word. "There's something there. I don't know what. I think we're friends. Is that what you see, too?" Lan asks, searching his face for an answer.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  Luckily for Lan, Ashansi is more or less distracted from the subject of him possibly being defeated or even worse, reaching a stalemate with a tree. Ashansi is extremely serious about defeating enemies, whether horticultural or otherwise. Any suggestion of tree-based weakness would likely in fact be enough for him to forget exactly how hung over he really still is and make him extremely up for round 2 with the tree.

  He watches the blanket with some amount of extreme trepidation as the Baskar all but throws it at him. "That doesn't seem like a great idea," he guesses, as the blanket flops over on top of him. He is still wearing his tunic. And technically his satchel, though by the time he lets himself bed down, he at least seems to have enough sense to unbuckle it and set it aside. Unfortunately, the act does leave him a little unable to argue as a blanket is thrown over him. "You see," he explains hopelessly, "I'm strong enough to defeat any cold, viral or temperature based. Nothing beats me, and that's a fact."

  It's really a moot point, since he's already wearing some of the cover. Though his boots are still on. "Urp. Uh, hold on." There is a part of Ashansi that is likely actually more comfortable with his boots on, saying something about his combat readiness. But that's neither here nor there. "I don't know, what are you going to do? It doesn't do any good to have the magic caster sick, doesn't your.. mana .. juice .. stuff get low if you catch a cold? I can't defeat it if it's in y--ohhhh." Ashansi's shades pop up at least by half an inch when Lan slips into her respective side of the blanket, just as the cavalier finishes getting unlaced. The subject dies on his tongue.

  Somewhere just over the edge of the blanket, Ashansi checks to see if his sword is still hopelessly impaled in the door. It is. Damn.

  It's not really like Ashansi has much of a problem with sharing beds, per se. They really only have a limited amount of money, and a limited amount of money only buys so many beds. It's just.. "Alarm. Defenses are lowered," Ashansi notes to no one in particular, growing increasingly more concerned for reasons he can't quite put a finger on. He slowly becomes very aware of where his hands are at. In the painfully long silence that follows, a boot surfaces from the edge of the blanket like a monster from the deep, and drops to the floor. Judging by the sound, it probably landed in the discarded drawer.

  "I... the Boss kid, yeah," Ashansi supposes, getting Loren's name wrong for what is probably not the first or last time. "I don't know. It's like... I don't know that I like the cut of his jib. But maybe he's got his heart in the right place? And, this guy, he seems like he might be the type to really have your back. At least, when you really need it. Maybe he can be a good friend for you. Someone who can really give you what you need. I signed on to look out for people like you, you know? But at the end of the day, I've been looking for the words to the song from the sky that I was born with. I haven't gotten to that yet. It kind of makes me worry. Like, when I'm gone, what's going to happen? Are you going to be okay? Like ... really okay?"

  Ashansi's eyes cannot really be seen, not in the dim light behind his shades. The subject causes him to shake his head slowly. "There's a thing, at the core of everyone. That is who they are. Their god, I guess. Made up of their hopes, their dreams. I don't think that kid knows what direction is up yet, not really. But maybe some tiny part of his god is you. And if it is, well, you need to be able to go to the end of everything for what you want. Maybe that's the most important thing. Maybe..."

  The only quesiton is, where did his other boot go?

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
Perhaps Lan senses his moment of vulnerability, because once she finds her preferred spot she sticks to it. This is /her/ warm spot now. "Even though you're strong enough to defeat any cold, it would really be doing me a favor if you would lie down for a while. Two people keep a bed warmer than one!"

Lan betrays no evidence that she understood that double intendre. She just glances at the boot that emerges from the blankets, watching it creep toward the edge of the bed until it thumps into the drawer. And already he's carping about her getting sick!

"I can't believe you called it mana juice." That's ridiculous! Maybe even kind of cute, in that 'means well but is very confused' kind of golden retriever way.

She lies there, blonde head against the pillow, and watches him talk as if he's working out a complex problem. Lan supposes that honestly, he is. Ashansi sounds out an idea, as if he's not sure. "Well... that's kind of it," she says, slowly. She's starting to put the pieces together. "I don't know that he really does."

Because Loren is snappish, Loren is grumpy, Loren is impatient. Loren is a valued member of Solaris forces and her immediate liason-slash-superior. She's supposed to protect him.

Because she wants to. Because Leah asked her to. Because Loren is kind of hapless in his own way, but there might be something there worth seeking out. Worth guiding into a better place.

Can she help Loren the way /he/ needs?

Outwardly she's quiet for long moments, thinking. "...Is that why you travel with me? Because you want to protect me?" Because she can't do it yet herself? Is that what he feels about her?

When she thinks of Ashansi meeting the Stranger...

"Asha," she asks, eventually. "You keep saying when you're gone. Where are you going? Isn't that kind of morbid? Even if it's commonsense in our business..." It feels like inviting bad luck.

Lan tries to imagine Loren putting that much importance on her and... Nothing. She doesn't know what that looks like.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

 
  "I ..." Ashansi stops.
  "..." Ashansi frowns, confused.
  "..." Ashansi looks straight up at the ceiling.
  "you know what would keep this bed warmest?" Ashansi suggests.
  "my sword," Ashansi points out.

  He's looking forlornly at Penumbra.

  Ashansi does not have a pillow of his own, his arms folded behind his head. Despite the ideas and thoughts rising in his head, he does start to relax somewhat, even absent the option of swinging his sword and knocking down a wall or two for a quick escape. Once he knows where at least one of his boots is and where Lan is without risk of her getting angry for being cold or getting sick and losing all of her mana fruits or however it's tracked, he is more preoccupied with his own mind and the ideas that Lan posits to him.

  "No, it's not really like that," Ashansi replies, picking up on the subject.
  "It's just something I do, looking after adventurers," Ashansi explains after a moment. It takes him a moment to admit a following thought, "I guess it's a little different this time around." He shifts slowly, trying to will some more heat into existence. "It's just like, when I think about something happening to you, I think, 'I need to fight a little harder.' I guess it sounds weak. But there's something important to me in you. Before, I was just a no account kid from the sky. And I've seen adventurers come and go. But I've never found anything or anyone that makes me want to do my best before. And I'm .. I just don't get it, is all. Maybe if you forget me, maybe that's the end. Maybe that's it for me. But, I'm not that important. I don't even really know who I am. That kid has an entire history. Who he is is made up of parts. Maybe you can rearrange them into a whole in the long run, and he'll be a stronger guy. Maybe he'll even be stronger than me."

  He thinks about her words for a moment. The barest edge of moonlit blue rises over his shades as he glances at the Baskar.
  "I think, maybe if that was the case, maybe I'd be okay if that happened. Even if everything I had was from you, it'd be okay if you forgot about me. As long as you were good with you, and you did your best, and your life was okay, I wouldn't need to go on adventures. Maybe I wouldn't need to find the song. Maybe I wouldn't have to fight. Maybe I'd be okay with just sleeping.."

  The cavalier looks back up. "...it's just a feeling that I have. Is that what a goal is?"

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
"If you want to have your sword in bed I won't stop you, you know." He's so weird.

You're a weird girl, Loren had told her once. He's the weird one though. Ashansi is a weird one. It seems like everybody she knows is just... not normal at all.

And who is she, that she might seem special to Ashansi?

"I don't really get it," she admits after a while. How do you ask someone if they're in love with you? And what do you do with the answer once you know it? "But I like that about you. There's a lot I don't understand, but you're fun anyway. You're strong." Why am I special, she wonders?

With the covers tugged up to her shoulders Lan is toasty and comfortable, conversational topic aside. She considers a dozen responses, but can't quite seem to find the one she wants. "...Will you sing me the part of the song you remember?" Maybe she's heard it, even if it's unlikely.

Maybe they're some kind of weird soulmates. Mom always did say that it didn't mean /lovers/, just... compatible personalities.

"It doesn't matter if you have or don't have a history. It doesn't matter if you're no account. You're real, whether or not I am," That's not what she wanted to say, was it? "Or, if you're not real then maybe nothing else is. ...I don't want you to disappear. So what if Loren's got a history? I don't know it. I can't make him tell me. At least you honestly don't /remember/ yours - you'd tell me about it if you did." Of course he would, right?

She's quiet, skin dark against the white pillowcase and her moonlit hair.

"..." Eventually Lan sighs. "I don't know. I thought goals were more..." she trails off. Something you devote your life to, or can make a list of steps to perform. Even chance, like winning the lottery! Not shyly shepherding a grown-ass woman through a love triangle in which nobody is actually in love.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

 
  "I've spent a long time on the road," the cavalier replies. "Lot of dusty trails, a lot of dragons and giant sea turtles. Nothing really scares me anymore, I guess. But, at the same time, I guess it feels like there's more to say, and more to do than we have time for, it feels like. That scares me. Like, when I sleep at night, it doesn't feel like I'm real. It feels like I'm just living to die. And if I think about it like that, I guess I just don't know what the right thing is to do by you." He laughs, even if the sound is more rueful than he meant.

  "I don't know if what I want to say is the right thing or not. Because every time I think about it, the only thing I can come up with is how to say goodbye..."

  Ashansi shifts, raising one knee in mild discomfort, more with the idea he wrestles with than anything else. The moral quandary is what occupies him, moreso than a feeling he doesn't know if he likes or not, a want he doesn't know how to process.

  "You're the most real thing I've ever known," Ashansi counters, finally and at once. "And, I guess I'll walk with you as long as I can. As long as it's right. That's the most important thing, I think. I don't know what's in the future. But I think it'll be okay, so long as..."
  The cavalier trails off quietly, as if unsure how to put something in words. It takes a second to realize he knows exactly what he wants to say, but isn't. There is an idea that clashes with the Baskar's interpretation, her belief and honesty. Everything that he is, everything that he knows, is open to her but for one thing. The thing that worries him the most. He tilts his head in guilt.

  "I can't really.. sing, per se," Ashansi admits, head down. "At least, not the song that I'm looking for. It's like, it's not made for me to sing. It's just, it's something I can hear, in my dreams, and my heart. Like I can feel something in my chest, right here. It's not real, it's not full, it's not whole. But it's there, and it pushes me. At least, in as much as it's always pushed me. Times are a little different than they were before."
  A long time passes between this moment and the next, Ashansi considering his sword across the way, a side glance. He considers it quietly, and the Baskar camped out not too far away from him, as if weighting the options.

  "I guess it's fine like this," he decides, quietly.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
She lies there quietly, eyes dimmed closer to amethyst in the darkness. Listening. "Living to die...?" Is that how he feels? "Like... like you're always running toward the end?" She doesn't understand, after all.

"Why me, though?" she asks. "What makes me so real to you? You can travel with me for as long as you want, you know," just in case that's something that was in doubt. "The way you talk about it, it feels like you don't plan on sticking around." Either because he expects to die, or because Ashansi does a lot of crazy things without /seeming/ to acknowledge the danger at all. Is this how he copes with that?

Maybe he's always uncertain.

He's always talked in looping circles, dizzy logic careening from one topic to the next. She's never been able to get to the heart of him, never even had an inkling of where it's located. It's always a little frustrating, but it's never been a source of despair. Until now. Her mouth thins.

So a song you can hear and feel but not sing? Maybe it's something you just know when you hear it. "I don't... really know what that's like, not the way you do. It was just once, for me. But it was an ache in my chest that made me break our tradition and take the medium. It was Rigdobrite calling me out. But..." Lan trails off again. "In the end, I have nobody to blame but myself."

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

 
  Deciding is a hard thing.

  The cavalier remains on his side of the affair, as if not only a few inches of cotton fill but a whole great wide sea separated them. His fingerless gloves sling behind fistfuls of dark hair as he lays in bed, in that nebulous state between relaxation and anxiety. This should be the easiest place in the world for him to sleep, really, but how does he explain how he feels, or at least the diference between what will happen and what he wants?

  He can sense her sinking.

  "Oh, rabbit," is the cavalier's oft-repeated epithet, his voice trailing off sadly. "You're real because the world wants you to be real. When you wake up in the morning, the light and the wind and the sound of the sky believes in you. Every cell in your body is awake and warm and alive. Everyone you've ever met, everyone who's ever seen you wants you to be real. People believe in you because they want you and need you to be. People are funny that way, I guess. Even the guardians know it. The sun sets because it's hoping to see you tomorrow, kid."

  A long, slow breath rakes from Ashansi's chest, the loops of wool at his chest rising over the crest of the blanket. "The dark isn't anything for you to be afraid of, when you're real. Because when you close your eyes, the part of you that you left in the waking world looks out for you, and waits for you, with all your friends."

  "....but, when I try to think about the same thing, it's more like an arrow, fired from a bow. I fall from the sky, and..."
  He pauses, just shaking his head. "No. If it comes to that, I guess I need to be as real as you want me to be."

  She said she can't understand it. Not in the same way. Not how he does. It's painful for him to continue, hard to think about it any further. Ashansi slowly lifts himself up under the blankets, slipping across the short expanse between the two of them. It alarms every part, and nothing can be harder for him than what he does in that moment, but he bridges the ocean between them, and settles down next to the Baskar, his cool weight resting the closest he's ever come to her, willingly. Removing his fighting gloves with his teeth, Ashansi spits them out of the bed. "So, quiet down..."

  And then moves along, taking the young shaman in to cradle her head against his chest.
  "...and listen."

  What happens next depends entirely on the Baskar's response.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
He never makes sense. In the end, it never seems to matter, because Lan is happy to be around him anyway. Ashansi is fun, and strong, and he makes her feel safe when he's not terrifying her with his ability to get swept up in some really crazy shit.

She's quiet as he talks, letting his voice become a thread that she follows in the pre-dawn darkness. Pink tinges her cheeks when he tells her that she matters, that people believe in her. That the miracle of existence is alive in her and everybody she has ever met. It's an echo of the bright sun over the grasslands to the east of the desert, warming her.

"Hey," she begins, moisture in the corners of her eyes. "You don't have to, you know. You... You're real, Asha. I need you to be real, okay? I really do." Why does it make her feel like this - the idea that she can't touch the wound he's hiding?

And why does she feel like truly understanding him would break something fragile?

She blinks at him when he moves, sinking down next to her, so close she can feel the warmth of his skin. Her eyes get wider when he removes his gloves. She opens her mouth to ask what he's doing-- not incredulous, not offended, not alarmed - just curious - and is hushed.

His hands are warm, she realizes, tilting the last spare inch toward him. She's warm from the blankets, soft flesh over hidden muscle, and she smells like soap and girl and sand and a little bit like dinner. "Asha...?" Her pwn pulse beats stronger, steadier, in her ears... until her cheek comes to rest on his breastbone.

Lan is quiet, a little stiff against him, hands held away from accidental contact with any untoward places. She takes a deep breath, breathes in the scent of him, of the blankets. Holds till the count of three. And breathes out, letting some of her distress be carried away along with it. "...Okay."

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  He, on the other hand, smells like the woods and the sky.

  There is a grand design to this thing about him, having the same powerful warmth of a hearth in the dead of winter, or a summer breeze over the grasslands. His adventure is something he wears plainly on his sleeve, a breeze of earth, bark and stone woven through his tunic even more inextricably than the wools that knit it together. His is the scent of salts and sword oil on the wind, leaved ever faintly with the bergamot mint that he got into a week or so ago for that wandering teamaker. A drifter, through and through.

  "Saa," Ashansi agrees with Lilac, as he settles in next to her, grudgingly.
  "I think, at least, I'm hoping that one's up to you at least."

  Ashansi doesn't seem like he minds her closer presence much at all, but there is something relenting about the cavalier in how he behaves. An acceptance of the familiarity between two people. It's not the same as a hostility, at least, not overtly. For a boy who moves as fast and as decisively as Ashansi, once he's made up his mind, he takes her onto him. There is only one droplet of tension against him, the ideation of a mild worry for the wellbeing of the person that even now he holds onto. The tick of his hands on her shoulder and at the back of her neck are warm and rough, and though his hold is secure on her, he doesn't reflect the great gravity that he feels. It is as instructive a thing as he can bear, and if she pulls away, even for a moment, it will be over.

  Sit here, against me awhile.

  His heartbeat slows as hers does. It seems somewhat uncharacteristic for a man who lives life a mile at a time, but there is something wayward in the deep bass thump in his chest, drumming lightly against her ear as it echoes her own, the tumble of confusion of two bodies levelling off slowly as he eases into their closeness.
  "Listen," the cavalier whispers into Lan's hairline, the settle of his scarf the only filter between them. "That's what I am. That's really everything I am, when you get right down to it. A beat that goes on a second after yours. People spend their entire lives believing what they see -- this -- is the truth, that that's all there is. But everything that they're afraid of is another whole world. It's the same place Rigdobrite dances in, I guess. And if you think about it hard enough, maybe it's not about what you see, what you're afraid of. Maybe it's about what you feel. How you feel..."

  "...How do you feel, Lan?"

  The lightest harmony between their heartbeats forms the dance of a tribe far away from this place. If she settles in the place he carves out for her, settles in that place between listening, thinking, and feeling, maybe she might even be able to hear the lightest melody that breezes between the three, the lost notes of a song since broken into pieces...

  // in the mynster, thy lord waits //
  // spinning fortune out of mince //

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
He's warm. Even after sleeping outside in the cold, he's still warmer than he has any right to be. She can't help but shiver and burrow deeper, dragging the corner of the blanket up over her shoulder and his belly, a tan arm reaching hesitantly across him.

As though she might fall away from him without being moored.

Lan at least has the decency not to touch any part of him with her feet, which are likely ice-cold if rumors about women are to be believed. A breath at a time, Lan's heartbeat slows. Her body remembers how to slot up against another human, how to cling for warmth and comfort, to flood with oxytocin at the touch of a gentle hand.

There's nothing to think about after all, not when he can hear and smell and touch Asha. Not when she can almost convince herself that nothing can touch her here, not even the Stranger. His voice is low in the darkness. The buzz of it tickles her ear, pressed against his chest. Lan shivers again, softer now, her body heat combining with his underneath the corner of the blanket.

He's always talking about things Lan can't understand. She wonders if it's frustrating sometimes... to be on a completely different plane of experience than others. To not have words for your feelings.

"I'm finally warm," she slurs against his shirt, eyes half-closed.

It must be her imagination. Something that isn't quite words, and isn't quite music, and isn't quite 'sound' at all. It's more of an impression. "Warm and sleepy. Confused because I don't understand." Lan is quiet then, for a moment. "...Scared that you'll leave and I won't ever know why, or what happened."

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

 
  The song twists, folds around corners that never were. It slinks up stairs that were never there, and slips through windows and drawers that don't exist. Once it takes root, the song threads through the inn, each lilting chime invigorating the bones of the inn. It descends quickly into imagination, into a wordlessness that would be infuriating, were they not woven into the fabric of the world that the chill left.

  He seems never more real than in that moment, his mind hanging on words that the Baskar might never come to understand. Though the idea discomfits him in a rather specific way, the cavalier seems to wrangle the thought in his mind.
  "....well, I suppose it doesn't matter a whole lot, anyway..I'm just a kid from the sky."

  He lets her twine with him, holding herself against his tunic, the wools and drills of his rich exotics forming a stable beachhead against pooled golden strands and bunches compliantly in her fingers. Consequently, he breathes slowly, in the long-suffering kind of way that simply lets the shaman have her way. At least, for the time being. The thought of her half-imagined worry slips across his mind, something pulling his mind away from the soft nest and nestle that is his friend. There are a hundred things to say. A hundred things he could say. None of it works.

  "I guess we just have to make the most of it," Ashansi decides, reaching down.

  At that point, Lan will feel his touch along her, before something large and unconscionable invades the space between him. Slowly, she can feel him pull on his rogue boot, which has been stuck in his back this whole time, onto one of her bare feet. The other, ice cold or not, he is perfectly happy to pull between his calves until it warms up too. Because, as he's pointed out time and time again, he's tough.

  The whole motion is admittedly more than a little awkward, as Ashansi has to slip at least one hand free of Lilac to deal with her without getting up to anything untoward with anything that is entirely too soft. Imagine how hard it is to get the boot from his back without getting too much closer to Lan. It's really a goddamn challenge, not to complain about it. "I guess, we don't need to make such a big deal about it," Ashansi says quietly, absently winding the hair at the nape of her neck into a nervous knot that is going to be a pain to comb out later. "Like everything important, we'll get there when we get there, I guess... so get comfortable while you can, silly rabbit."

  "So, sleep already. I'll just be here. Thinking about adventure. No pressure at all."