2021-03-09: Spoonful of Salt
- Log: Spoonful of Salt
- Cast: Xander Lovell, Riley Arwell
- Where: Zoara Badlands
- Date: March 09, 2021
- Summary: Xander and Riley go looking to for alchemy ingredients, but start to recall the anniversary of something terrible.
=============================<* Zoara Badlands *>============================= Most of Zoara's interior is a vast expanse of desolate earth. A handful of areas receive just enough rainfall to allow the growth of foliage, but by and large, this place is almost as inhospitable as the wastes of Ignas. Ghost towns dot these dusty plains--many of them are settlements that dried up and died during the Celesti Civil War. Most of the remaining settlements have forfeited their sovereignty to Guild Galad in exchange for their continued survival. Rail travel is the easiest way to cross the Badlands. Guild Galad's military maintains a tight grip on most of Zoara's rail routes, ensuring that transit is reasonably safe, if extensively-policed. Outside of the rail network, travelers band together in caravans to keep themselves safe. Centuries of war have scarred this land, and attacks from bandits -- or worse -- are an unfortunate fact of life. BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeL32o-P6Yw
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
The badlands aren't the easiest place to be looking for ingredients. It's taken a good hour of walking to find an area with any amount of respectable overgrowth, and Xander exhales loudly, exhausted more by his own frustrations than the oppressive nothingness of the wastes. "Ugh, finally."
This wouldn't be necessary if someone hadn't been snacking on their medical supplies, not to name any names, Riley.
Xander kneels in the vegetation, scanning his finger over the variety of flora available with a furrowing of his brow. He fumbles in his pack a moment for a small booklet of his notes for cross reference. "This isn't what I was hoping for."
His one blessing in the moment is it hasn't been terribly long since they last spilled blood for the curse. The fog of bloodlust isn't gnawing in the back of his every thought just yet. He'd rather have used such a reprieve differently. As it is, it would be a waste of what little relief they win for themselves to go digging through the dirt and come back empty handed. No, he's going to make this work.
"Whatever. I'll run some experiments tonight."
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley knows what he did, but is feeling less than remorseful. Life is short -- particularly now -- and Xander's medicine is too delicious for its own good. He will treasure the memories of devouring it. Even if it would seem that Xander won't be equipped to make any more of it particularly soon. At least not with what's available growing freely from the ground.
"Hey, is there finally something alive over there? It must be a miracle!" Riley strolls up at a leisurely pace to the foliage Xander has been inspecting, and leans over to follow his gaze down to the plants he is currently criticizing.
He hmms.
"I don't see anything that looks particularly delicious in there, either. We might need to hit up civilization, soon."
It's on his mind too that they're feeling pretty good at the moment, and it won't last. Meanwhile, they're spending it here in... well...
He contemplates this stretch of the badlands, wondering if it has merits he hasn't discovered yet.
"...Not that there aren't some excellent rocks out here," he decides.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"I can make something that works, but I don't think I can replicate the taste with any of this."
The taste is quite possibly what caused this problem in the first place, and yet Xander persists, wrinkling his nose at the thought of having to downgrade it.
Civilization. Xander's face darkens, but he only grunts in affirmation. He starts clipping away plants selectively with the occasional glance at his notebook. No need to uproot anything if only a few parts will do. By the time they get back, will the thirst have seeped back in? It'd almost be lucky to be attacked by bandits at this point.
Not that there would ever be enough bandits. Xander debates briefly whether that's lucky or unlucky on the grand scale. But it doesn't matter.
"Rocks," he says without looking up. He already knows they all look the same. "Do I want to know what you're planning on doing with rocks?"
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
I can make something that works, but I don't think I can replicate the taste with any of this.
"Wait, is that what you're scowling about?" Riley blinks at the plants anew. He'd assumed there was nothing medicinal about them at all.
"That you can't do the flavor?" He gives Xander a smile and a little nudge before becoming playfully solemn. "You know, it will be a difficult trial, but I think I'll manage... ... eating medicine that tastes like medicine." He gives a theatrical sigh, at that.
Do I want to know what you're planning on doing with rocks?
"Admiring them," Riley responds. He directs Xander's attention out toward the horizon -- or tries to.
"See, that one looks like a bird's head. With a beak and all? And kind of an angry expression."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
With Riley's nudge, Xander tenses. He sees the smile, then darts his gaze away, fumbling with a bulb before managing to get a solid grip on it. His tone fights to maintain its annoyance. "You say that, but." He doesn't feel he needs to finish that, hoping Riley can fill in the blanks with his insulting protest of choice while keeping his gaze fiercely turned away.
"I'll... figure something out."
Xander continues to snip the plants without watching them, because even that's too close to Riley's periphery. Miraculously, he does not slice his hands in the process.
With another sigh of his own he finally looks up to pay attention to Riley's newfound fascination in rocks. "...Sure," he relents, but he's almost certainly not looking at the correct rock, and not for long enough. "I'd be angry too if I were a bird rock, I guess?"
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
You say that, but.
"What? I really will eat them. Maybe not recreationally..."
But that's more of a plus than a minus as far as Xander is concerned, isn't it? It's a bit of a wonder he still flavors them at all. The thought that Xander cares about such a thing has Riley smiling to himself with a little ember of warmth in his chest.
Meanwhile, Xander is doing all he can to ignore him and makes only the most cursory attempt to look at his bird rock, but Riley is pretty familiar with the ways of Xander at this point and takes the verbal response as a win.
I'd be angry too if I were a bird rock, I guess?
"Yes. I mean, there is very little chance you'd ever be able to fly. Being a disembodied head, for one thing..."
He pauses, watching Xander achieve dangerous feats of plant snipping. "You're about to cut your fingers off any second, you know."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"You'd better," is all Xander has left to say on the matter, as if Riley refusing medicine based on taste were any real, actual concern. Maybe in Xander's head, it is.
"Well... Does it at least have both of its eyes?" He shoots Riley a look, still not watching himself. "I'm fine. Worry about your bird--"
Xander suddenly sucks in air through his teeth, the blade making a clean slice right across his palm through his glove. He drops the knife to squeeze at the wound. "Still fine, shut up," he snaps preemptively.
Droplets of blood land on the flowering buds of the plant. Xander only starts to reach for his pouch before the smell hits him. A subtle fragrance, but sharp, sticking stubbornly to his nostrils once he recognizes it. Alone, it doesn't mean anything, but mingling with the rusty scent of his blood, Xander's gaze goes hollow.
Wait. This... shouldn't be growing this time of year. Should it? The last time he saw one was--
His hand trembles. "H...Hey." He swallows to wet his throat, and it's like trying to force down a handful of barbed seeds. "How long... How long has it been? When did I--"
Xander's body remembers where his mind desperately tries not to.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Does it at least have both of its eyes?
"I can't tell. It's in profile. Didn't you look at it?
Riley tsks, and idly begins composing a little song about it on the spot, in a practiced voice offset by the less-than-dignified lyrics.
"I'm just a bird rock... alone with my bird thoughts... dreaming of the sky..."
He stops when he hears Xander hiss, and turns back quickly.
"Oh no, you really did!" He crouches down beside him and reaches for his hand to inspect the damage, although Xander is the one with medical training between them and doesn't seem to want the attention.
Something comes over Xander, then, with more seriousness to it than a cut palm. Riley goes still, a cold feeling creeping up his spine.
How long has it been?
Riley swallows. There's no delay or doubt in grasping what he means. There are no memory gaps for him. Just a desolate stretch of days he can't take back, kicked off by one cruel mistake.
"...About a year. The date's coming up pretty soon," he says, in a softer voice. He reaches for Xander again, wanting to enfold him so he won't shake like that.
"I guess I should have mentioned. Maybe we should mark it somehow..."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
It's only because of the interruption that Riley's bird rock song is able to exist, however fleetingly, without judgment.
Xander can't think much of music right now.
"A year," he repeats. That doesn't feel right. A year. It all blurred together. Even his 'recovery', if it can be called that, happened without a sense of time. He stumbled through their shared nightmare, only having the presence of mind to put one foot in front of the other.
Yet it had numbed somewhere along the line. It stopped being a thought he had once an hour. Then stopped even being once a day, or every two days. Time happened. But suddenly, the passage of time is gone and back then becomes today.
Xander smacks away Riley's touch with a violent jerk and a fanged snarl. "Don't--"
He freezes, startled by the harsh eruption of his own voice. The gnawing realization that it's today and not back then sinks in as he stares at Riley. Xander goes silent, wrapping his arms around himself as he curls in, ignoring the blood he smears on his own sleeves.
"Yeah," he finally whispers. "We should."