2019-07-09: At Least They'll Have Company
- Log: At Least They'll Have Company
- Cast: Loren Voss, Ivan
- Where: Macalania
- Date: July 09, 2019
- Summary: In short, two young men of a similar spirit meet in a forest. Loren's here to evaluate the place in hopes of finding a path home. Ivan's here for some private time. Together they... sure don't fight crime.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Spira is a pretty weird place.
...Had been Loren's assessment of matters by the time he had first crossed the Moonflow. By this point, after Guadosalam, after the Thunder Plains, and now upon seeing this forest, he's assured of it.
Yeah. Spira is a really weird place.
"Guess she'd probably like this place," he muses, frowning at the small pane of glass on his medical scanner. It's not the intended purpose, no, but he can at least run an approximate component analysis on some of the flora.
"...Figures," he sighs at last, slouching his shoulders.
Even his analyzer doesn't even know what some of the compounds in this are. So much for it being anything even remotely familiar.
Or for that matter, possibly edible.
He fishes in his bag for a ration bar, looks at it, then puts it away again. Still not hungry enough to eat it...
Standing, he takes a moment to take in his surroundings once again -- shimmering trees. Light that almost seems to weave itself through the air like silk. A cool crisp touch in the air just shy of actual cold.
It almost seems to speak the nature of mystery and secrets itself. If there's any hint out there of a way back to Filgaia from Spira, wouldn't it be here?
So he'd thought, coming out here, but...
He turns around, gazing at the other edge of this forest path, looking just like the scene he'd gazed at previously.
He hadn't taken any modules in forest biome navigating. He wonders why he didn't think about that earlier.
Because, right now...
He's lost.
"...Great," he mutters aloud, stuffing the medical scanner into his bag.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan had originally planned to report back to the Guard pretty soon, but then other stuff happened and he just kept walking. And walking. There were breaks for rest in there but really the point has just been to get as far from civilization as possible, until all of the parts of him insisting on hiding away from humanity are satisfied. As long as he finds some interesting stuff to report back on, it's all right, isn't it?
And this place is... ... interesting. Yes. It's like nowhere else he's ever seen.
At another time, he might want to appreciate it.
But as he enters deeper into this inexplicably magical-looking forest, what strikes him as more important than its unusual beauty is that it seems so serene and peaceful that he can't possibly imagine that anyone else is in earshot, and so perhaps he has finally, finally Escaped Civilization.
He takes a breath, puts his head in his hands, and lets out a frustrated:
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
...somehow he managed to hold that in for like 24 hours but it's no less powerful for the delay.
Some birds scatter and such.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Perhaps in another life, Loren would definitely, absolutely understand the urge to let out that scream you've been holding in reserve for a long, long time. If it weren't for his own pressure-cooker internal state thanks to a near-life-long habit of bottling things up (both due to his circumstance and just because he's grown up in a society with a near-absence of privacy) he might have done so himself.
Years ago. Multiple times.
Possibly today, even.
But instead, Loren is Loren as he is and not as he might have have been. Someone screams out into the wilderness of the forest. Birds take flight.
And Loren, once he's taken a breath and his heart has attained a normalish pace again, tears off in the direction of the scream.
And stumbles across Ivan. The blond young man has a doubletake, then regards Ivan again, searching him for the sort of life-threatening injury that cry would have suggested he'd received.
At length, he tilts his head, his face a mask of confusion.
Today has just gotten a little bit stranger.
"Do you," and he gestures at the forest around them, "normally scream for no reason, or is today a special day?" he asks Ivan, dryly.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Apparently it isn't Ivan's day because not only was someone in earshot, but like the judgiest-looking guy he could have possibly imagined just sort of manifests out of the crystalline foliage to quip at him.
Ivan lets out a secondary frustrated yell in response to this development, but it is tamer in comparison to the first one.
"I have all sorts of extremely good reasons for screaming about nothing," he responds, standing up taller and trying to piece together the shreds of his dignity.
"But I can't tell you about them because she knows everyone and there is no such thing as a private conversation in this world anymore."
A breath. "Who are you and what are you doing waiting around in the middle of these stupid crystal woods to judge people?!"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It is in fact true that if you were to open a dictionary to the word 'judgemental', one of the definitions would be 'see also: Loren Voss'.
Among his many talents is the ability to be personally offended by everything, and in that case this certainly includes someone screaming for (apparently) no reason in the middle of a forest he was busy...
...being lost in?
He might remember this part of the equation in a moment. But for right now--
Loren, for once, is the taller of the pair, a fact that he takes some small moment of satisfaction in.
...He thinks, at least. He'd have to get up close, and he...
Yeah, he's not doing that. He's just going to assume, this time around. Let him enjoy the idea of it for just a little longer.
"Oh, really," Loren deadpans, eyeing first Ivan and then the scenery about them. "If you were out on the Thunder Plains, I'd say you might even have a good reason to sound like you'd sustained a mortal wound. But here?" He just fixes Ivan with a long stare as the young assassin claims he can't tell him why because she probably knows him.
Before Ivan flips the questioning about onto Loren. "I-- I have a very good reason for being out here!" he insists, lifting a hand as if to fidget with his glasses... which aren't even on his face, let alone on his person. He awkwardly lets his hand drop. "But-- but I don't need to tell you what it is!"
Not only is he a bad liar, he's also bad at making up a lie on the spot. Which is why he doesn't even try...?
"And I could ask the same of you, you..." He gestures, vaguely, as if searching for a good appellation for Ivan and coming up empty. With a muted disgruntled noise, he looks away.
"...Thomas," he says, as if by way of reluctant self-introduction.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
"What? I don't have to tell you why I'm here if you don't want to tell me anything," Ivan complains. He sits in silence with that conclusion for a few beats, as crystal forest bugs chirp around them.
"...So we are just two people mysteriously in the woods not telling one another why," he says. "That's pretty stupid. This is pretty stupid." He rakes his hands through his hair a little, loosing more bits from his ponytail and leaving it messier, and heaves a sigh.
"Okay, I'll go first, except it's not really that interesting a reason, even, I mean it's pretty obvious, right? I was trying to get away from people. And yet." He waves a hand at Loren -- Thomas? -- to complain of his existence again.
"I wasn't trying to trick anyone into thinking I had a mortal injury, I was trying to not sound like anything to anybody. ...Except loud and in the middle of nowhere."
In a typical Ivan pattern, even when trying to sound conciliatory, he forgets to introduce himself. He's always a little incredulous that anyone really wants to know his name.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Well, then. Fine."
Loren refolds his arms across his chest and glances away from Ivan as if affronted by this whole situation.
A silence settles across the two of them. A heavy, weighty silence.
"...Guess we are," Loren offers up ultimately, unwilling to back down, but similarly without the means of an alternate path forward.
"..."
He sighs, unfolding his arms, and finally drops down into a crouch on the forest floor to ultimately similarly sit there in silence.
"...I guess." He rubs at the back of his neck, and looks away.
"So, what, you went out into a forest in the middle of nowhere to get away from people?" It sounds, at first, like he's going to give Ivan shit again.
"...I never thought about that. It seems kind of..." he trails out, as if struggling with the feeling behind it. "A little lonely, I guess. But being around other people's..." Again he lapses into silence. It's easier to be alone, but it's lonely.
It's so stupid, and yet. And yet.
"I don't even know what kinds of Fiends are out here. I was wondering if I was next," he says, as if trying to explain his own actions on checking out why someone was screaming.
And then it's the moment of truth--
Just what was 'Thomas' doing out here?
"I was... looking for a way back," he explains, looking away from Ivan. He pauses, and takes a breath.
"AndthenIdefinitelydidn'tgetlost."
This is followed by yet another moment of pregnant silence.
"...You didn't tell me your name."
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
"Lonely? Don't just throw a word like 'lonely' around. It's not like I was going off to scream in the woods forever. ...Can a person go off and scream in the woods forever?"
Apparently Ivan hadn't really thought about this possibility either, despite the fact that he was the one in the woods screaming. Running away to the woods forever is a compromise between hiding in his role as an assassin and facing the world that he hadn't previously considered. But probably not a fate he wants. Would Talia still come to visit him if he became a screaming guy who lived in the woods? Even if so, it would probably be awkward.
Loren describes temporarily fearing for his life, and Ivan contemplates the collateral damage of the scream for the first time.
"Ah, I didn't think about that. I mean. You weren't supposed to be here. But sorry for any terror or whatever."
Loren confesses that he's lost (more or less).
"Ah, yeah. I probably know the way out?" He wasn't really focused on the path he took into the woods so much as the distance, so he probably won't really know until he tries.
"...you were trying to get out, but why did you go in? Were you just exploring? It is pretty unique in this forest."
You didn't tell me your name.
"Uh, Ivan?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
'Don't just throw a word like 'lonely' around.' The young captain hunches his shoulders, as if on the defensive.
"Shut up," Loren grouses, settling back firmly into his more prickly self. "I wasn't asking for your opinion."
There's a pause. "Probably. Isn't that what religious hermits do?" He thinks he heard about something like that, once, while out in the sands of Aveh.
Funny to think that a place like that would be preferable to a forest. The desert will definitely kill you, and every part of it looks the same, and it's hot and awful. But at least he has some idea of what to do in a desert. In a place like this where everything is brilliant and alive...
Sometimes he wonders what would have happened if he had disappeared on Meribus, or Glenwood. Not that he wanted to run away. Not that he could run away. It had been more like a rising panic from within, an urge with no reason behind it to vanish and never be seen again. Would he have ended up screaming in the middle of a forest, too?
His expression darkens. Good thing it never came to that.
"I wasn't terrified!" Loren has gotten back on his feeta again. I'm a soldier! he thinks vehemently. "Look-- I thought, if someone was killed, or if something was coming, I wanted to... know, I guess," he trails off, lamely.
In spite of the sword at his hip -- in spite of the muscle he has gained (not a lot, but it's something), he still doesn't exactly look like adventurer material. Maybe halfway. 3/4ths there?
He still has the vague air of a scholar in over their head -- hasn't been able to shake it, yet.
His hasty confession, of a sort, to his current predicament, is met with an answer:
"What, really?"
Which is then followed with, "I told you, I was looking for a way..."
Wait, is this guy a Filgaian?
"...I was looking for a particular plant. But I've had enough wandering in circles for today," he lies, hoping he doesn't have to answer any specifics like 'what does it look like'.
And at last there's a name to the face. "Ivan. Just Ivan?"
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
The flat shut up gets a scowl from Ivan, but goes un-commented-on.
Loren seems to get super defensive about being called out on being afraid when Ivan wasn't really trying to call him out, which Ivan does not quite know what to do with, and lacks the self awareness to realize is a mirror of the sort of frustration people often have when dealing with him.
"Then... not sorry for the terror?" He shrugs.
"Just Ivan. Do I look like a noble to you?" The tradition where Ivan comes from is that family names are only for people with important families. As it happens, Ivan literally does look like a specific noble, but it's not like Loren is going to have met him. Ivan isn't dressed like a noble, at any rate. He's dressed like a mercenary. Or like an assassin, some might say. Though it's not as if assassins have a uniform.
"...Or was I supposed to give my job? You didn't give yours."
He shakes his head.
"What does your plant you're sick of looking for do? Medicine? Potion ingredient? This seems like a good place for special plants."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Loren, similarly, shrugs. "I guess?" he offers, with all the poor social skills he has available to him.
'Do I look like a noble', Ivan says, and if Loren had done a little more research on name traditions around the rest of Lunar proper, maybe he would have realized more precisely what this meant.
As it stands -- the best he has is that it suggests that Ivan isn't from Spira (he's at least noticed the names typical around here). Which doesn't even out the possibilities a whole lot.
"No. I guess you could call me a medic. I was becoming a doctor once," he says, a statement that is half truth (he's a medic) and half lie (he never was on track to be a medical professional). "It's for medicine, apparently. I'm, uh..."
He trails off for a moment before picking that thread up again, thinking in the end he may as well go for it. "Not from around here. It's a long story, and I don't really have the time."
He's seen other people brush off probing questions with a statement like this. Why can't he?
"Come on. Didn't you say you knew where the entrance was? This place is a maze..."
He needs to get Lan or someone with a better idea of how to navigate a forest here, or something.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
"The next time somebody screams in the forest and you come running, you can just tell them you're a medic instead of getting weird about whether you were afraid or not," Ivan suggests, again with a total lack of self awareness about the countless times he's done practically the same thing any time anybody implied he had an emotion.
"Yeah, I can probably point the way out..." He squints into the crystalline expanse of trees.
"This way, I think...?"
Well, at any rate, if Ivan is lost, too, at least they'll have company! ...that... neither of them wanted.