2021-07-06: This Is (Not) a Duck
- Log: This Is [Not] a Duck
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Ethius Hesiod
- Where: Shevat
- Date: July 06, 2021
- Summary: Lan embarrasses herself. Ethius confronts a new and powerful enemy.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
There's a serenity to a well-run cafe between rushes, when all the dishes have been washed for the next meal and the cooks get a chance to restock the makeline, when the servers finally have time to clean and roll silverware. Lan hasn't ever worked food service so she's sadly ignorant of these things... but at least she's a pretty low-maintenance customer, seated at a table near the side of the cafe with a pad of paper and some pencils on the table in front of her, and a half-full cup of tea cooling at her elbow.
She's not much of an artist, but even so...
The pictures she's sketching, if one were to glance at them, are probably supposed to be Gears. Or maybe Shoopuffs. That one might be a boat...?
"Ugh, this is hard..." she mumbles, pushing the drawing pad a few inches away as if in defeat. Maybe she'll finish her tea and just kind of... not think too hard about it. After all, it's not like she knows how to build one. ...Or that anybody really does, as far as she understands it.
"...Maybe if I just catch a desert beetle and raise it really well," Lan continues, staring thoughtfully down at the page.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
It's not long before the Caravan Kinship intends to disembark and return to Spira to see to the culturally designated end of a Summoner's Pilgrimage, given the scale of what's riding on it. There's some last matters that need to be squared up, some borrowed equipment to be returned, some other details to be negotiated, etc, etc. Things Ethius does not have any hand in. (What does he have a hand in with the Caravan Kinship, outside observers ask? Good question...)
The Symbologist is currently observing the flightless birds that have taken roost about the floating platforms that make up one of the few communal social spaces of the floating city that has been barely hanging by a thread for centuries.
The mostly stare back, make some noises, and one in particular leans a beak up towards him as he peers at its vaguely defined flightless glory. Said flightless bird reveals, somewhere within its ancestry, the residual heritage of something so truly horrible that evolution did everyone a favor by taking away its capacity for flight.
* H O N K ! *
Ethius takes two steps back, startled in movement if not in his (partially obscured) facial expression, bringing his left hand down on the table near where Lan currently sits.
The DESCENDANT OF HORRIBLE CREATURE, satisfied with making noise, turns away and goes to congregate with others and maybe plot to take something that's not theirs in their beak later. One never knows.
The man looks over his left shoulder to see that there is, indeed, someone sitting there, where he withdraws his hand from the table. "My apologies," he says to Lan as he seems poised to walk off to stare at something else.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"Gah!" The sudden loud noise makes Lan startle too, pencils scattering across the table with a sudden jerk of her hand. She wasn't really paying attention to anything except her weird musings-slash-art project! And add to that the extra surprise of someone backing right up to her little table. "What..."
Oh, did he disturb the birds? They're kind of weird-looking (Lan has been told they can't fly, but then how did they ever get up here??) but as far as she knows, mostly harmless.
She blinks up at the man as he removes his hand from the table - at least he didn't smudge her drawings by accident, but would anybody be able to tell if he had? - before blurting out, "Oh, I know you! Uh, well, kind of." It's him, the guy from the fight in the old Elw ruins; they'd both fought Azoth along with that girl... Yulie somethingorother, she thinks.
Lan's memory for names is spotty at best.
"Hey, I never got to say thank you for helping out during that fight. Were you okay afterwards? I mean I think I saw you get thrown into that 'console' thing and it looked like it really hurt." She hopes it wasn't actually someone else. That would be really, really embarrassing.
"I actually kind of wanted to talk to you. If you've got time, want me to buy you a cup of tea or something?" she offers with a smile that's somewhere between 'winning' and 'ditzy'.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Ethius freezes at the 'I know you,' two fingers subtly flexing in the more distant hand over and over by habit.
'Well, kind of.' He doesn't stop doing that just yet, as his eyes scan the surrounding... open-ness, as Lan continues to speak abotu sharing her gratitude for 'that fight.' Against the Solaris invasion attempt on Shevat, in their Gears? No, something about her voice is sort of familiar but he can't put a context to it.
'I think I saw you get thrown into that console thing,' which kind of, sort of narrows it down. Sort of.
There's that distance in his character, that caution, with the lack of immediate answer when she invites him to some sort of talk or conversation. The odd man at last fully turns to face Lan, as if satisfied - however much he can be - with the character of the immediate environs and where everyone else may be.
His expression hasn't softened any. He seems like the sort of man that's always on alert, always guarded. Sometimes it's hard to determine if he's even really breathing.
"I can spare time." Time from staring at flightless birds? "Your offer of a drink is appreciated, but I am all right without." He will, upon invitation, take a seat somewhere across from the smiling young woman and an illustration that may be screaming on the inside (foreveeeeeeeeeeeeeer).
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan would be more recognizable if she were still covered in Ribbons of Darkness(tm) or calling down meteors on people's heads, but nobody wants that in a comfortable cafe setting.
She's not entirely ignorant of the way he looks around, as if checking for trouble. Lan... has done more of that than she strictly cares to, over the past few months. At least in Shevat, it feels like she can relax a little. They would know if Solaris made it here. They would, wouldn't they...?
It's not like they didn't bring huge Gears and their war faces, last time they were in the neighborhood.
"Thanks. I'll try not to keep you too long, okay?" Of course, Ethius could get up and just walk away any time he wanted to. That's the beauty of open-air seating! "My name's Lan. If you change your mind on the drink, it's okay. Everybody gets thirsty." She at least has the courtesy to pull her drawing pad away from his side of the table to give him some room, and then turns over to a fresh sheet.
At least now the boat-thing isn't staring at him.
"And if it hadn't been for you, I think Azoth might've really gotten the upper hand on me. --Oh, he's that 'robot'," she adds, because Ethius might not know. Lan certainly didn't. "It's really good to see you here though. I had this crazy dream a few weeks ago but part of it stuck out to me because you were in it, and I don't even really know you. You got a tattoo that wasn't a Symbology tattoo - you were a Symbologist in the dream, okay - and someone made you get rid of it. It seemed so sad."
She just... isn't shutting up...
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Ethius, sort of rudely, does not return his name when there's the polite prompt for himself to say who he is back. It is a habit that no longer serves any real purpose, since the Drifter circles - and even the Solarian ones - know his name, if not precisely what he is or what he wants. (Other than burning things? Complex things with so many different moving parts.)
"I will get thirsty on my own time." So he says. He remains stand-offish even in absence of a proper, credible threat by his reckoning. (How does the Caravan Kinship put up with keeping him around?)
Lan immediately drops an important piece of information right then and there in her gratitude for his assistance, and it is an act of willpower for him not to quirk an eyebrow or inquire further when she points out that 'robot' that fought them was named Azoth.
He internally files it away. Whether that's the same as the individual 'Azoth' or the name of a model line, he decides it may be best to continue to act as ignorant about this information as he can muster... just in case.
"You're welcome," he seems intent on leaving it at that when she nearly cuts him off at 'welcome' to talk about a 'crazy dream from a few weeks ago.' He usually stares. No, always stares. Has he blinked since he sat down? The personable young woman goes on about how she saw him in a dream, and he does, once, and his eyes start to look another way as he lifts his left arm, an an open hand with it.
"I should--" He gets cut off. 'You got a tattoo that wasn't a Symbology tattoo.'
He raises his left arm at an angle, but more on that in a moment, as she goes on about how he was a 'Symbologist in the dream, and someone made you get rid of it.'
"Dreams are just that, Miss Lan," Ethius attempts to dismiss her, the smallest raise of volume in his voice. "While it is curious I would leave such an impression, I would not read too deeply about it." He is a Symbologist, though, that much is known if anyone's ever seen him cast a spell. Gesticulations with a hand, or hands, and chanting. It's unambiguous. "Symbology is a common practice of sorcery. I fail to understand what..." There's a pause, as if a part of him were going off-script. He speaks in a way often like he's reading off a script, so when that 'breaks,' it's noticeable. "...You are wishing to speak to me about. Dreams are merely that."
This would be a slam dunk deflection, were it not for one subconscious detail for Lan may be able to pick out then and there - his left arm is currently held and angled the same way it was in the dream, from the angle of the viewer as he speaks.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Geez, what an attitude... although there's an awful lot familiar about how he just... is so stiff. But as long as she hasn't made him upset, Lan will count it as a positive first impression! Her standard for a good first impression is pretty low, okay.
But he seems to have misunderstood a bit more than Lan had really planned on. "Huh-- oh no, of course it was just a dream! Gosh, not everything's a prophecy or something, even if sometimes it is." If this was a prophecy Lan's going to be super upset because it didn't even have the decency to be easily interpretable and she doesn't know of anybody skilled in dream interpretation that's close enough to ask about it. Ah, he's definitely a bit perturbed... he got louder.
"I just thought it was kind of neat," she amends with a bit of a shrug. "You had a tattoo shaped like a tree. And there was a really fancy, super high-tech room you were standing in, and a woman I'd never seen before told you it wasn't part of the... the whole planned thing," she gestures at him as if to imply 'his entire body'. "And to get rid of it, but I thought tattoos were supposed to be permanent? Though I guess since it was just a dream, tattoos can do whatever they want to."
Lan has... only really seen him do any magic once, and she was kind of busy not dying to a robot. Give her time, maybe it'll come back to her.
"Anyway, uh... sorry, I guess that is kind of weird to just say to... someone..." She looks at him -- his outstretched hand -- strangely. "Uh... hold that pose, okay, I want to try something," the blonde girl says, and pushes her chair out. Counting out a few steps, she stops where she thinks the winged woman would have been. "Okay so, you were holding your arm out like that, and now just... uh, imagine that I have wings and I'm upset that you got a new... tattoo, and..."
Perhaps too late, Lan realizes that what she is doing is really, really weird. Maybe even for her. "Uh... ssssssssssssorry..."
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
"I should say--" Ethius tries to repeat what it is he should say, but he only gets those first three words in before Lan goes on about how it was 'kind of neat,' discussing a tattoo shaped like a tree.
His left forearm is partially visible, where it can be seen he currently doesn't have a tattoo shaped like a tree. Just part of a complex mapping of Symbological glyphs, and Ethius holds his posture there like he were trying to do his very best impression of a statue. A dark-skinned, staring statue that still breathes (almost invisibly), as Lan goes over some things in exacting detail about what she saw. Something about a fancy, super high-tech room, a woman she'd never seen before, etc, etc, all the way down to the story about how the tattoo needed to go.
He stops blinking. (Did he start to begin with?) Lan steps away as she points out how he's holding his arm, how he was holding it 'like that,' just imagine that she 'has wings' and...
He stands just as she starts to quietly say her apology, hand coming down on the cafe table with a noise that has the flightless birds forgetting for a moment that they are flightless.
"This was a dream?" He asks, firmly. That's not a statement trying to defy what she says, he's asking if - for certain - this was a dream. His body is angled as such that the other hand is currently out of Lan's view, his body oriented so that said arm isn't even in view.
To one of the flightless birds, it peers at the fingers on that hand out of Lan's view, how fingers flex in certain ways.
It sort of reminds it of how its caretaker gestures to it that it's time to feed.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
See, he really doesn't have a tattoo like that. And this isn't a dream, so as far as Lan knows, tattoos are still permanent. Even Symbological ones. So he couldn't have had a tree tattoo there.
She's already starting to apologize again, and is trying to think of a way to ask if they can maybe start over from about five minutes ago, when she hadn't just embarrassed herself, when he stands up - and slams his hand down on the table. Lan jumps in place, a quick one-two step taking her halfway behind her chair just in case he decides he wants a fight--
But he just wants to ask a question, and the noise did finally get her to shut up for a minute. Progress?? "Uh... yeah, I mean, I don't really do the whole prophetic vision thing. I didn't really train for it. And I didn't just dream about you, I had a few different weird dreams that night. I mean it's not like..." She grasps for words for a moment. "It's not like every dream means something. And even if they did, I don't know what a dream like that was supposed to mean to me." After all, as they're both well aware, they hardly know each other. "I just thought it was cool, and you might enjoy hearing about something so weird." Lan's evaluation of what passes for 'fun campfire tales' has never been quite the same as anyone else's, but...!
"There was a different dream where there was a house fire, and another one where someone shot her father. I don't even have a father. It's just... brain weirdness! ...Probably." Her fingers flex on the backrest of the chair, dark skin against the white-painted metal. "Why? Do you like trees?"
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
The man before Lan might not be treating this as just a mere dream now - that the implications of what she's speaking might be severe. At least the dream didn't up and say, 'hey, go and burn/blow up Diablo because this is why,' that would have sure made things easier for everyone, wouldn't it? Something that gives concrete answers, an /idea/ as to what this man is... doing, and why, when he has withheld that for so long.
He is looking down upon her with unrelenting, unwavering attention when she goes behind a chair for partial cover, as she explains what it is she saw. Not a prophetic vision thing, didn't just dream 'about him' for someone she never really knew outside of this encounter where he ended up slamming into a console.
"I... would like to know these assumed details, yes." It's not clear at all if the man is saying this in a friendly 'oh it's cool you're sharing thoughts about me' or if this might be something of a much, much, much more dire context, as he has pulled back control of his volume, cadence, and the way he speaks back to that weird... distant, almost unemotional conversational tone.
If anyone in Loren's orbit has ever sat down with Lan and verbally grilled her, there is an eerie, uncanny likeness to this man's manner - but he can't be Solarian. He doesn't use Ether. No one would go so far to put up that charade when it's life-and-death against a top-tier killing model like that.
"...House fire? Someone shooting their father...?" Ethius asks, as he takes a hand off the table to go up to his forehead. Did he have dreams like that? "My opinion about how much I enjoy the imagery of trees is not of co--"
The flightless bird mistaking Ethius' hand signals for 'feeding time' leaps forward and bites down on his hand, simultaneously unprompted and prompted at the same time! His eyes widen as he draws his hand back and, well.
Now there's a flightless bird doing flightless bird things on the table. This does not need more thorough description.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
To be fair to Lan, she tends to think the best of people until they act otherwise. Solaris as a nation is exempt from this policy, of course, but only because of Reasons. She really did just think it might be something fun for this stranger to hear about. Clearly she was wrong!!
She eyes Ethius until she's fairly certain he's as calm as he ever was. If she has to fight somebody at a cafe surrounded by these weird fat birds, Lan is going to... to...! Well, not quit adventuring or go home, because she kind of can't. So it better not come to that. It's a relief when he relents.
"..." It couldn't have really meant something to him, could it?
Lan tugs out the chair and goes to sit back down, because she's still got half her cup of tea to drink and civilized people sit at tables instead of standing around them. At the same time, Ethius -- to her point of view -- suddenly abducts a duck(?) for the table. Lan stares at the bird. Then up at him. Then back at the bird. "...I'm sorry," she tells it gravely. "I don't have any bread."
"Well if you don't like trees then it doesn't really matter, I guess," she begins, feeling a bit lost. "But it would make the tree tattoo make more sense, and we'd know if it might've been a prophetic dream or something. Because there's no way I could know whether or not you like trees, but..." Lan waves her hands a bit, in a vague manner, above the table's surface - careful not to whack the duck. "You know? I mean, I guess there're a ton of other cues but trees were just easiest. Um... the room was..." Dream-Loren had said it wasn't Etrenank, and what little she'd seen of the city's technological levels and general decorating schemes seemed to agree with it. But Dream-Beast hadn't known anything, nor had Dream-Margaret.
"So what's your name?" she ventures, which seems safer to ask than just about anything else.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Ethius shakes out his gloved hand, as that bird clamped down on said hand something fierce - breaking the illusion that he might be some well-disguised inorganic something-or-another. Meanwhile, flightless bird, let's say it is a duck(?), flaps its useless wings and otherwise makes a show of claiming the table.
Cue, now, the visual of Ethius holding his hands in a contrite position towards said duck(?), trying to gauge whether it's going to go at him again as Lan goes on about tattoos, his opinion of trees, and what she saw while he is starting to walk around the edge of the table to try and break line of sight of the duck(?)'s gaze.
He cannot. Duck(?) thinks he was trying to feed it. It expects food. It only gets the faintest whiff of fear. (This may also be nutritional in nature. Somehow.)
It is because of this situation that Ethius does something that is generally difficult to get out of him, because he is in the middle of A SITUATION and the lesser of two problems right now, apparently, is to say his name. Considering what information Lan volunteered, that's more than fair, and maybe he should say it at least twelve times if it's that valuable or important!! (What does one mean, that's not how that works?!)
"It's Ethius," Ethius says as he considers his next move with the hungry duck(?) who might leap at him at any time in pursuit of the promised FOOD.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Azoth is way better at pretending to not be a robot than this guy is...
"...Maybe we could get it something to eat," Lan offers, because she is solution-oriented. While Ethius attempts to elude, placate, and then outsmart the duck(?), she disappears briefly from view to dig in the knapsack resting against the table legs. A brown hand appears only long enough to drop a ball of yarn on the table before disappearing again. "...Okay, how about a cracker? It's kind of bread," she frowns, popping back up from the dubious safety of 'not in the duck(?)'s line of sight'. And in her hand...
A single, slightly dusty cracker. Which she promptly tries to hand over to Ethius.
"That's an unusual name," she tells him, as if Lan has room to talk. "Here, try feeding it this. Maybe it'll go away! Or maybe it'll tell all the other birds where it got a cracker from and we'll have to run for our lives!"
She sounds too upbeat about both options...!
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
The duck(?) shows no interest in the ball of yarn, other than manipulating it with its bill-beak-face and knocking it off the table while making a low, growl-like noise of indeterminate aggression level. (In other words, they may be inches away from a major optional boss fight meant for end-of-Chapter 3 parties).
Ethius ends up circling around close to Lan by circumstance, as she volunteers the cracker. He reaches out and snatches it before it's caught in the duck(?)'s peripheral vision.
"I would advise a retreat of some manner, yes," he gets out after an awkward pause as he keeps the dusty cracker hidden within his clasped fingers, other hand extended palm facing outward - the sorcerous equivalent of pointing an ARM.
Moments pass, as the duck(?) extends their flightless wings, beat them once, and otherwise posture...
"Carbohydrates in the hole," Ethius calls as he flings the cracker up high and makes a dramatic, absolutely positively unnecessary and even risky-as-hell dash and dive for one of the floating platforms in order to make good on the one known weakness of the duck(?) - it can't fly after them!!!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Her yarn!! Lan dips down to catch it as it falls, and hooks the strap of her knapsack towards her with one foot as Ethius slowly extends his hand towards th duck(?). All her stuff is in there, and every good Drifter knows when it's nearing time to Run For Her Life. He prepares to fire. Lan slings the knapsack up onto her shoulders in one smooth motion, and begins to charge her ribbon.
And... GO!
Ethius makes his move! Lan ducks (ha ha ha) to one side and leaps after him, the antigravity powers of her favorite accessory letting her float easily after him. "Go! Go! I don't know how long the cracker will last!"
What if the duck(?) isn't interested in crackers? What if it eats meat?! "How can they just let these things wander around a peaceful city?!" Lan complains in a tone that is edging dangerously close to 'whining'. "Why did you pick it up?!"