2020-11-19: I Don't Speak Kupo
- Log: I Don't Speak Kupo
- Cast: Lulu, Paine
- Where: Calm Lands
- Date: 11-19-2020
- Summary: A quiet night's watch becomes slightly--but only slightly--less quiet.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
There are unspoken parts of travelling in a group that have to happen, but don't get as much thought until it's necessary. Lulu happens to handle many of those for the group, but one she cannot do entirely alone is the matter of watch in the night. Even when there aren't Fiends to consider, being surprised by anyone on the road these days is...
Undesirable.
So, this particular night on the Calm Lands, there is a fire; there are people sleeping, or otherwise resting. And sitting looking out for danger is a particular black mage, in her heavy dress with a Moogle at her feet and her red eyes out on the horizon. She is listening rather closer than that, of course, but it is more than sight and sound. The fire casts warm light on her face, gleams in her eyes like it belongs there.
It is Lulu's watch at the moment; there are enough of them to alternate, more than enough by far. But it being Lulu, one can expect it to be largely quiet...
Without something to change that. It's a relatively chill night.
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
"This log taken?"
Paine doesn't wait for an answer before letting herself down onto it, taking a seat adjacent to but diagonally separate from Lulu's. She has her well-worn cloak tight about her shoulders, but leaves its hood back, her hair moonlight above the stark red of her headband.
For now, she looks at the fire, not Lulu.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
"Feel free."
Lulu gives the answer regardless, turning to look at Paine in what passes for a greeting, a once-over that again notes her red eyes, the silver hair. Similar, though different.
Lulu returns her attention to the horizon for the moment, having nothing immediately to say beyond this. She is not the type to immediately pry or move for small talk; she appears willng, for the moment, to sit in silence.
Whether this remains true or not of course remains to be seen, but for a while, Lulu isn't the one to break that quiet.
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
Paine's eyes are too red already to reflect the warm hues of the fire. They just add a flickering texture to her gaze. Her pale skin gently pulses with the orange glow.
"You're protective of her."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Her. Who it is doesn't need saying.
Mog's white fur remains red-orange in the flickering light. Lulu doesn't turn to look; she is silent for a few moments yet, as she considers her answer. There is no especial rush, at the moment, and she doesn't hurry.
"Yes," she answers eventually. "I am."
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
Paine is patient. She does not look over during the pause. Perhaps she would not think of it as a pause at all.
"Then. Are you keeping an eye on me?"
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
It goes on in this way. But this question gets a response somewhat sooner than the statements did. It may not even register as a pause, indeed.
"Yes and no," Lulu answers, and finaly turns to look at Paine. "Yes, in that I don't know you. I don't know your habits, I don't know your approaches, and I don't know what you're likely to do. But not in the sense that I expect trouble."
"Yuna trusts you; I think you're worth extending that trust to. What I've seen hasn't suggested to me otherwise."
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
"Yuna."
A linguist could not tell you with precision quite what is wrong with how she pronounces it. None of the syllables changed, they just came to the edge of it perhaps. But she says the word as if it is even less familiar than it is. Or, perhaps the opposite. Like she's been thinking it so much today that the word seems unnatural now from repetition.
Regardless, it's as though Paine needed Lulu to say it for her to say it.
"Is she usually right about people?"
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Yuna. Yes, it would be reasonable to have thought a lot about her, considering.
"...Usually. She expects the best in people, and they tend to show it to her, whether they were inclined to do it or not."
"Not always, of course."
"But she's surprised me before. Not this time, though."
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
"Hm." In the tenor of this conversation, the noise seems almost generous; a departure from the norm. Interest, perhaps, or a professional sort of thank you, like you'd give to a colleague at work.
"She seems in high spirits for someone who just got out of a relationship."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
A colleague at work is about right, here; Lulu is not a friend to this woman yet, if indeed that will happen. But they share a duty, now. One that's rather personal, at that.
Lulu, though, hears that particular statement and looks almost wry at Paine, lifting one eyebrow. "You think so?" she starts. Then she shakes her head. Paine may or may not see that there is something darker underneath that amusement, something that makes the word inappropriate after all.
"It would seem that way," Lulu answers. She /could/ point out a truth she has noticed now. But there are older truths that need saying, first. "But that was never a love match. And it was complicated by the fact that Maester Seymour is dead."
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
Paine draws up, her shoulders spreading her cloak a little, and looks at Lulu directly.
"You /killed/ her fiancee?" she queries. "Or the Al Bhed?" She shakes her head. "Just like them to hide it..."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
"She did," Lulu corrects calmly. "I had a part in it, of course. It was... an unfortunate necessity."
"She had planned to convince him to confess his previous crimes--that he had murdered his own father in secret. He declined, and sought to kill those who knew the truth and destroy the evidence. In the end, he died to Macalania's Aeon. Yuna takes it as her own responsibility, though we were all a part of it. And one of her firmest goals since has been to Send him."
"...We had planned to return to Bevelle regardless; to confess, and to explain. That... did not go as intended."
"Only one Al Bhed was involved, and she is and was a Guardian."
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
"Rikku, right." Tidus had dubbed Paine a new fan of the little blonde, but Paine at the moment sounds more like a student showing a teacher she remembers a fact.
Blowing air between her bowtie lips, Paine lets her shoulders down. She rests one hand on her knee as she considers this new information.
"I know Maester Seymour Guado. He wouldn't know me, though, I'm sure. That all sounds like him to me, though it took me a long while to realize it."
She moves her eyes to Lulu. "She was never in love with him?" she asks confirmation.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu nods, much like that same teacher acknowledging her student. After that she waits. There is more to say, certainly...
But waiting means she hears what Paine has to say, which interests her. "I have a feeling that you mean more than just his behavior regarding the Crusaders."
While she says this, she doesn't pry into what exactly that /is/. Instead, she continues, "No, I wouldn't say she was. Her feelings for him were... different, from that." This is said in a way that suggests it's about the end of that particular feeling, though.
"Yuna knew before the rest of us; Maester Jyscal returned from the Farplane to deliver a sphere to her. We saw it only later. ...It was destroyed, of course. There is no proof of what I'm telling you."
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
"That's good," she says about Yuna's feelings. "That all sounds complicated enough as it is."
She returns her eyes to the fire, and her lips wear the closest thing to a smile Lulu's seen tonight. "It's not real unless someone records it, huh?" she wonders wistfully.
"Mind if I ask about the dolls?" she changes course. "The only person around here it would surprise me more to see hugging one all the time is Auron. And yes," she adds drily. "I did think about the other men."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
"Yes," Lulu agrees. Very, very complicated.
...Lulu notices that expression, of course. She notes it, takes in the detail. Recording... There's a history there.
"Hmmm?" Lulu answers instead of inquiring. She looks outright amused at the question, though it's a subtle sort of expresson, blatant only by comparison to Lulu's others. "Surprising, is it?"
She looks down to the doll, regarding white fabric lit by flickering firelight.
"Mog is an old friend," Lulu says simply.
At this point she looks to the fire, and the moogle rises from her seated position and toddles over to Paine, peering up at her with sightless(?) eyes.
Then Lulu lazily uncurls a hand, painted fingernail glinting in the light, and Mog lifts her hand as well.
The fire gains a little swirl of flame above it, briefly, before Mog lowers her hand and Lulu sets hers back down.
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
Lulu gets the privilege of seeing real shock on Paine's face. Her lips retreat from her teeth, and she shifts her hips to face the approaching doll. She looks back and forth between it and Lulu as if seeking some confirmation that this doll isn't out for blood. "Hey," she objects, a little shakily, as Mog raises her hand.
When the flame is over the fire and not shooting towards Paine herself, she relaxes, letting out a breath with closed eyes.
"Hi Mog," she greets. "Is she really..." Paine halts and shakes her head. "Never mind."
Whether the dolls truly have a mind of their own in any way, or are simply toys Lulu moves around, is irrelevant in a world like this. People should find comfort and even friendship where they may, while they may.
"I love her," Paine says instead.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Maybe Lulu does know how to have a bit of fun, where she can make it. Maybe.
Hand of course is something of an overstatement for the doll's blunt white arm, but one can imagine where the hand is in any case.
Mog lifts up her face towards Paine further at the greeting. Lulu does not answer the question Paine cancels asking. Instead... she watches, and--perhaps this is its own sort of inquiry.
"She's been with me for a long time."
Mog waves at Paine and then retreats back to Lulu's feet, taking a seat there and going still. Mog, now that one looks, has surely been repaired many times over the years, but maintains a certain vibrancy. Well cared-for.
Eventually, after a look out over the night sky, Lulu adds, "Any other questions?"
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
Paine regards Mog in a new light, until her eyes unfocus and she's not looking at her, just towards her. It is in that state that Lulu's question finds her. Paine raises her red eyes.
"Yes," she says. "Two more." She lifts one finger, bare despite the glove on her palm.
"What do you want me to call you?"
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu does not stop watching elsewhere; she does not stop paying attention. But she also doesn't stop paying attention to Paine. She'd said it earlier, after all; she needs to learn more. And maybe this is a way to do that.
But her own red eyes turn again to regard the othr woman as Paine indicates two. Two, then.
The first: "Lulu."
She waits for the second.
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
"Are you sure?" She may be teasing, it's hard to tell. "You wear your hair like someone who likes being called Dame."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
"That's true. If you /want/ to be more formal," Lulu begins back, "I won't stop you." She is definitely teasing back. Almost definitely.
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
Paine seems satisfied with that exchange, enough that her reply is to lift her second finger to join the first.
"Before me, had you ever met another Spiran with eyes like ours?"
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Second question. This one...
Lulu is thoughtful, at that. She looks at Paine, briefly through Paine, and then at her again as her red eyes focus.
"My parents," Lulu answers. "My father... I think. I remember him a little."
"But otherwise, no."
The unspoken question is in her expression, though: the same question, given back.
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
Paine nods slowly. When a Spiran implies her parents might be gone now, they're gone now. You don't need to ask twice.
"Same," Paine says. "Just you."
That sits a moment. It's the first silence all night that thickens the air. It cannot be called awkward. But it is present.
Paine pushes up on her knees, stretching as she stands. "Somebody will be relieving you soon. Someone louder. Too late at night for that."
Is that a compliment?
"Paine is fine, of course," she adds. "It's all I've got." She raises a palm in farewell.
"Say good night to Mog for me. I don't speak Kupo."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
It's a question Lulu wondered about as soon as she saw her. And now, she has an answer for that.
The silence isn't a bad thing, but it is somthing that is. No, it would not be called awkward. Lulu doesn't stand, as Paine does. What she says...
"Much louder," Lulu agrees, knowing who's next on the schedule. It might be a compliment.
"Paine, then." Pause. "...Heh. I will. Good night."
Lulu watches Paine go, for a moment. Then, back to her watch.
...But Mog happens to lean forward and turn her head to peer in that direction, as Paine leaves. There might be a little wave.