2019-02-28: Stars No Moon

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<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    After a while -- after they'd eaten, after the elders had spoken with Lan, after they'd had time proper to settle in -- Loren had spoken himself with that segment of Lan's home village authority only known as the afore-mentioned 'elders'.

    Night has since descended in full by the time he returns to Lan's childhood home. No hint that there had ever even been such a thing as a 'sun' can be seen, anymore. Only the few magical (probably) lights of the village stand in counterpoint to the darkness of the heavens.

    The door is open. She'd said there were no locks. Rather than head in, he stands a moment or four outside.

    Before he heads around back and, hoisting himself up with a still-sturdy aged crate, levers himself all the way up onto a lower outcropping, then up to the highest point on the roof.

    It's not perfect, what with the lights of the village. But it's good enough. 

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    The vast majority of the lights are magical - barring a few that are just candles or oil lamps, and therefore kept far away from the edges of the village and the precious, precious trees. The roof of Lan's childhood home is sturdy enough to stand and sit on, though a few wooden tiles shift underfoot where time has weakened their hold.

    From up here, he can see a good deal of Little Firelight... people are indoors, for the most part, and the remains of the potluck feast have all been cleaned up. A lizard scuttles away from him when he sits down too close to it, slipping into the crack between a tile and a beam.

    Of course, the stars aren't as clear as he'd like them to be, but he can still enjoy a wonderful view - there are almost no clouds, and the moon is a mere crescent hovering over the nearby Badlands. Underneath his feet, the house is quiet - only the sound of the fire in the hearth and an occasional indistinct voice filter up.

    Bats fly overhead, occasionally swooping to snatch an insect out of the air. And in due time, the crate he'd used to climb up here creaks again before a familiar blonde head pops up over the edge of the roof. "There you are. Did you get enough to eat?" Lan asks him, and climbs up onto the roof like it's an ordinary thing. 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    It's not completely silent even out in the wastes. There's sounds from the house below him, the scuffle of lizardy claws as something else rasps its way across the roof. Then the sound of insects -- probably out in the trees, or close to it. The sound of some night-bird -- he doesn't know which, there are a lot of different kinds, allegedly. Leathery wings, overhead. From the village itself the soft sounds of people settling down for the night. The hiss and crackle of distant flame.

    Wherever there's life, there's sound.

    It's just a different sort of sound from Etrenank. Or, for that matter, Bledavik.

    A different sort of sound announces the approach of an intruder, of a sort.
    Loren sits upright from where he'd been lying, the tiles clattering dully underneath him. For an instant he's on high alert--

    "Oh. It's you."

    A moment's silence follows.

    "...Yeah."

    He levers himself back along the rooftop, unselfconsciously sprawling on top of her home.

    "...I guess it didn't take you long to figure out where I was, huh." 

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    Lan picks her way across the roof to stand over him, looking down at him as he makes himself comfortable. "Yeah. You're a little too noisy to be a raccoon," she teases. Lan lets the joke hang in the air for a moment before sitting down a couple of feet away from him, her heels threatening to stick out over the eaves.

    "Did you come up to stargaze?" she asks him, eyes wandering across the familiar constellations. There's the Sailor, and the Horse, and that one she always forgets the name of that looks kind of like a wonky banana.

    After the heat of the day it's nice to lie here, with the tiles warming their backs. 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "It isn't my fault the tiles are loose," he grouses, and though it's too dark to properly make out his expression, it's a safe bet he's scowling at least somewhat. "You should get those fixed. What if it rains?"

    It takes him a moment to remember that, no, it doesn't really rain much in this part of Filgaia.

    "...Ugh, forget it," he settles for. The light for a moment reflects off his glasses.

    "Yes. It's not as good as the desert proper, but it's better than Bledavik."

    The moon isn't bad either.
    So the thought runs before he remembers people live there, which is the point where he scowls.

    He's silent now, gaze up at the heavens alone.

    He'd spoken with the Elders... and he hadn't liked it.
    He wasn't Baskar, so he wasn't a shaman -- indeed, there was only so much they could tell him about how to use the Medium, with much of its alleged power unavailable to him absent the necessities of their rites and way of life and the understanding and wisdom required to grasp both.
    But he still did have a connection to the Guardian, somehow, and he could bid it forth.
    Leah had thought it almost a joke on the part of the Guardians. Someone from the sky, granted a power solidly of the land.

    On the matter of summoning the Guardian, at least, the Elders had provided some guidance.

    I wish I had gotten rid of it...

    Even if it has saved his life twice over now. 

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    "Did I say it was your fault?" she asks, turning to give him a look that sits somewhere between amused and patient. "We probably don't have to worry too much about rain in the near future." Every year the edge of the Badlands expands a little further. One day, for sure, it'll reach the edge of the village. Too much rain isn't even a concern, out here.

    She folds her arms behind her head and wiggles her toes, stretching a bit. "If you wanna go to the desert to watch the stars, it's not like it's that far. A couple of miles, maybe?" Of course, then he'd have to do desert stuff like stay out of the sun and drink plenty of water and try not to get eaten by those lizards the size of horses.

    You know, normal desert activities.

    "..." She's quiet for a few moments, watching the bats. 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "You implied it," he retorts, and perhaps if he weren't lying on her roof he'd have crossed his arms in his present sulk, or somesuch.

    On the rest of what she says -- about her hometown, about future rain and the lack thereof -- he's silent, gazing up at the endless expanse of night.

    Each of those... is a star. Another sun, somewhere out there. Who-knows-how-many-worlds, orbiting those suns. It's easy to think about it in the abstract.

    Gazing up at the sky now here, atop a roof in some backwater village...

    Involuntarily, he shivers.

    "...No," he answers her, for the moment distant.

    Lan isn't the only one silent now.

    He'd always thought... what?
    That out there was somewhere to go?

    It doesn't feel the same anymore.

    It's perhaps minutes later that he sits back up, encircling his arms around his knees. "..." 

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    She scrunches her nose at him. "No, I said you made noise being on the roof, not that you were knocking tiles loose. Gosh, you're so cranky tonight!" As if it weren't a usual occurrance, as if Loren Voss were known for his good cheer and friendliness! Lan turns over onto her side, propping her head up with one arm to look at him.

    What she sees is a young man, grumpy, but moreso than that... unhappy. Perhaps deeply so. She's quiet yet again, eyes gone dull violet in the darkness.

    "Hey, what're you thinking so hard about?" she asks him, reaching out with her free hand to gently nudge his elbow with a fingertip. "You look like you're upset. It's not about the medium, right?" He already knows the basics of how to use it - as much as Lan could teach him and as much as he puzzled out on his own - so it can't be that he's just frustrated. "Loren, talk to me." 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "Mmph," Loren more or less grunts, almost certainly making a face in the darkness.
    Is he really more cranky than usual? The world may never truly know.

    At any rate, what had been a mostly-peaceful survey of the heavens soon turns sour; even here, he can't quite...

    At her first touch, he seems intent on ignoring her.
    But this, soon, becomes impossible to attempt.

    "...Stop that. It's not," he says, trying to shrug off her touch; he unwinds himself, siddles a fraction of an inch away from her. "It's fine," he insists, a little more vehemently. "It's nothing."

    He pushes off with his hands, swinging his legs over the edge of the little rooftop, his back nearly to her.

    At first, he doesn't say anything.

    "Did you ever think about what's out there?"
    The question seems to almost come out of the blue. Out where? 

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    It's hard to tell how cranky Loren is with any kind of certainty, at least until he's having a breakdown or shouting about something. Lan just sort of accepts it as how he is. Hadn't her mother once said something like, 'you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose'?

    Something like that. It had made Lan laugh herself sick.

    She's not laughing now, anyway.

    He scoots out of touching range and Lan lets him. She got her point across at any rate. But the idea of 'out there' is new from him. Sure, they've talked about stars (and had adventures on the moon!) but... what could he be thinking about? She lies on her side on the roof and frowns in the darkness, thinking about how little she knows of space that doesn't involve Rigdobrite.

    "I guess not very often," she admits after a moment's contemplation. "We know what's on the moon, and we know what stars are made of," and that they supposedly taste like shrimp, "but... do you mean people? Because you know there're people in space! Did you forget Lunar? Or did you mean even further out than the moon?" 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "I'm not talking about Lunar," he says, a hint of irritation winding into his tone.

    Once, knowing that would have been fantastic enough. Now it's just a disappointment to find that the Moon was at once lush and verdant and inhabited.

    "I'm talking about out there. As far away as you can see."

    His shoulders hunch, a touch.

    "...Light has a top speed," he says. "It's not instant. It takes time to reach us here." He glances up at the heavens, at the sickle moon. Beyond it.

    "So when you're looking out there, you're looking at light that left a long time ago. ...There's even light that hasn't reached us yet, until maybe someday, you'll see a new star."

    On paper, it seems so simple, so plain.

    "When I was a kid, I thought..."

    It used to look welcoming. Somewhere, out there.

    His shoulders slouch. "...But I was just a kid," he says, eliding just what it was he used to think about the stars. "I was thinking about how many stars there are just now. It's..." Again, he trails out, lapses into silence and stares down into his own lap.

    "..." 

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    Lan waits for him to answer, but even when he does it's not very enlightening. "...?" Perhaps to her credit, she listens to him speak despite the mysteriousness of the subject. So light isn't instant? "So... it's a little bit like a sound?" she guesses. "Those aren't instant, either. Like counting the seconds between lightning and thunder to see how far away the storm is."

    That may make sense, but she still doesn't really know why he's talking about it. Does that idea bring him happiness? Because he doesn't look very happy right now...

    Lan watches him in the darkness of the evening. "What did you think?" she asks after a short silence. "That there were people out there in space?" 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    Trying to explain physics to someone like Lan is hard.

    Trying to explain existential dread to anyone is harder.

    "...Kind of, yeah," he allows, shoulders sagging. Sound's speed is not as fast as light -- that's all there is to it. "That's why you can count the seconds," he adds, still not looking at her.

    And nothing should be able to be faster than light...

    He'd realized a long time ago it was a silly, childish thing to wish.
    And impossible. Solaris didn't look towards the heavens, literally or figuratively. Their attentions were elsewhere.
    He'd still been a child when he'd realized that, and he'd gone on to grasp for other dreams. But that old dream has lifted its hoary head and come back around as if to bite him, to drive home the lesson he had realized in the desert when he had struggled with Keil in her Gear.

    "Maybe," he says at length, only to follow it with, "I don't know -- I don't know what it was."

    How do you put into words a sentiment like this:
    'I looked at the sky and it was no longer an open window.'
    'It was an abyss.' 

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    Even if Loren could properly vocalize it, there's no guarantee at all that Lan could understand. Not just because she doesn't have the education his status as a First Class citizen had afforded him, but because her point of view is fundamentally alien to his existence.

    Lan lies on her side on the roof of her childhood home and watches him a bit sadly. No matter how much time she spends with him, Loren remains something she can't really reach. Whenever she thinks she's starting to understand him, she's reminded of how distant his way of thinking is.

    "...Hey, wait here, okay?" she says after a few moments more, and pushes herself up onto her feet again. She hops off of the edge of the roof, her ribbon letting her land as light as a feather, and disappears indoors.

    It takes her a few minutes to return, climbing back onto the roof - this time with a bit more difficulty, because she's carrying a pair of earthenware mugs clutched in one hand and has a blanket draped over her shoulders. Lan holds one of the mugs out for him, and seems insistent that he accept it. It's just a mug of tea, lightly sweetened, but it smells comforting.

    "It gets cold out here at night," she tells him needlessly. "Hold onto this, even if you don't want to drink it." 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    It's true, in the end. They come from different worlds -- about as different as is possible, in all honesty. It may just be that some distances never can be crossed, no matter how one might make the attempt.

    It's a journey that certainly isn't made any easier by Loren being Loren, though.

    She doesn't get it, he thinks slouching where he sits, on the edge of her rooftop. But perhaps it's possible that no one would necessarily get it.
    It seems like wherever he goes, he can't make himself understood.

    "Okay," he answers, staring down past his knees, over the edge of the rooftop, towards the washed-out shadow of the dirt path below. There are buildings in Bledavik in the slums alone that would dwarf this little hut.
    Where she's grown up is so small. It makes him feel oddly cramped and vulnerable at the same time.

    She returns a moment later, bearing--
    Something. He squints in the darkness, already slinging one of his legs back onto the rooftop as he attempts to get a better look at what she's doing.

    He receives quite soon after a mug, pushed into his grasp. His hands close around it.

    It's warm.

    "Cold, huh..."

    It is, he realizes, getting chilly. His gaze turns down towards the dark shape of the mug he holds.

    "..."

    He hadn't even known he'd needed something like this.

    If by degrees, his gaze lifts.

    "...Thanks." 

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    Even if there are distances that can't be crossed, even if there are people who can't be understood...

    In the end, kindness comes easily to Lan.

    "You're welcome," she tells him quietly, and settles down crosslegged beside him. Half of the blanket gets tossed over his shoulders, the other half tugged over her own. Soon it'll be too cool even for her to be outside in her traveling clothes. She holds her own mug in both hands, soaking up the heat greedily as they both watch the sky.

    For a long time, it seems like she might stay uncharacteristically silent, despite her occasional glance his way. But eventually she finds something to say that seems to satisfy her.

    "Don't worry too much about it, okay? If you ever figure out how to say it, I'll listen." 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    He starts when she sits next to him, though it's slight.
    He doesn't make any move to shift away from her, this time. He just glances over at her, abjectly baffled... before turning his attention down at his mug.

    It's nothing like it was in Elru. But it's still getting cold, too-similar to the way the desert also grows cold at night. For now, there is warmth to be had -- between the cup in his hands and the blanket draped around the both of them, stopping at least some of the heat in their bodies from attempting to warm up a vast, cold universe.

    Soon they'll have to head in. Eventually he'll have to sleep. For now, though...

    He just nods. I doubt it, but...

    Sometimes a whole universe can hang on a conjunction.

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