2023-09-03: Wouldn't Be Your Eyes
- Log: Wouldn't Be Your Eyes
- Cast: Josephine Lovelace, Lily Keil
- Where: Damzena Desert
- Date: September 03, 2023
- Summary: Josie and Lily cross paths. Lily lends a little aid. Josie reiterates her decision from the last time they spoke.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
It hadn't been a determination to do so, as such, but since the day Josie had walked off to pay her 'debt' as it were, it's not as if she has encountered the Black Wolves very much. Perhaps that's how it will continue to be: after what happenened between them and her, it isn't as if trust is necessarily in abundance, even if there are those among their number who would attempt to try just that.
There's no going back again, in life, however the heart might wish it. The home one yearns for isn't -- will never be -- the same as when they left it. Josie has made her peace.
It's just that fate -- or chance, as she'd see it -- sometimes plans differently. This is a story of an unplanned encounter.
"...Yup. Aim's off," Josie remarks, standing above the corpse of an ocypete. Her intention'd been to take it down without damaging the wings -- and the valuable feathers -- too much, but just as she'd suspected, she's done rather the opposite. "Weren't my eyes, now..."
At least, she hopes not. She's got a ways to go before she goes the way of her old mentor... ideally.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
"No," Lily says, "It wouldn't be your eyes."
She approaches by resting a hill nearby, looking down thoughtfully at Josie and the corpse. She hasn't been looking for Josie, not because she wasn't tempted to, but because she wanted to respect her need to pay off that debt. Now that she senses her closer, though...
She can't quite stop herself from dropping in to say something.
"Gun's easier to fix than your eyes, anyway." Pause. "For most people." Hers are somewhat different, after all.
She resumes walking down the hill; she's dressed as ever in old military gear, but there's a sword at her hip instead of just a knife, and Dog trotting alog at her side.
Dog barks happily once at Josie, and starts down. "Don't take her kill," Lily cautions Dog, who shrugs a little down in disappointment but does as she's told.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Very quickly, Josie learns, she's not the only one all the way out here.
"Well, well! Rose-of-Sharon! And ain't you lookin' fine as always?" Granted, Lily has her own 'way' of looking fine regardless of the slings and arrows of life's misfortunes, but so it goes.
She hadn't been all that certain if she'd see Lily again for one, or if she ought to try, for the second. Add a third with getting stuck in a prison dimension for a month or so and a return to her usual wandering on the follow-through from that and...
"But you've the right of it. I figure it's the sight... unless it wants to be something else. Might need some new parts, yeah? I ain't gotten new bits for this one in a year." Regular upkeep helps -- can even stave off the worst for decades, sometiems -- but eventually all things come apart.
Usually the littlest parts, in her experience.
"So, where's the boy? Or the rest of 'em," Josie asks, her gaze settling on Dog but failing to see any others from her erstwhile crew.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
"It's the conditioner," Lily says entirely straight-facedly. The willingness to make a joke is perhaps the biggest sign that she's happy to see Josie--her expression doesn't particularly tell the story, after all. Dog does that enough for both of them.
"That's a while," Lily says of a year. "Just like it's been a while since we've met up." She considers, glancing around the sands, "Not the best place for maintenance, though..."
"We've split around the region to pursue some leads," Lily explains. "And to avoid being too easy to grab all at once. Leon should be back with the Karlsefni at the moment. I'm out here doing some experiments... or at least, that was the plan, once I found a suitable place."
"What about you? Did you find what you were looking for?"
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Without missing a beat, Josie quips in kind, "Yeah? Don't suppose it'd work on my mane?"
Her hair has never been known to behave all that much. With its shorter length of late, though, it appears to be making the attempt...
Her lips twist into a lopsided smile. "Yeah? Guess I never did write or call any. Don't hold it against me, Tiger. You know what I'm like!" She gestures, broadly, with her left hand. "Oh, aye. I ain't doin' that here, now. If I were to go back out to Damzen, maybe with a proper ocypete feather collection in tow, though... maybe I'd be thinkin' about that then." Sand has a way of getting everywhere, after all, and that includes into said tiny, easily ruined components. In fact, that might be part of the problem with her old rifle's aim in the first place.
"Oh yeah? Smart move," Josie remarks, glancing past Lily regardless. "Harder to shoot fish when they ain't all in one barrel. ...Take it from me," she summarizes, grinning at Lily once more.
Did she find what she was looking for?
"Seems like it, or something near enough, anyhow. Close's good for more'n horseshoes, I figure. So what's all this about experiments?"
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
"Maybe. I'm not sure it's that powerful."
It's an easy way to establish that she doesn't really mind, maybe. She does, but on the other hand... "I won't," Lily says. "It is what it is. In our lives we don't have a lot of time to drop messages around." Then she considers. The feather collection, is it? That explains what she was after with the ocypete in the first place.
Nothing's past Lily this time, though she gestes to Dog, who barks once and then trudges off to start doing a patrol of the area. "...Heh," she says of fish. "True enough."
But something close. "Good," Lily says. "...You can come back anytime you feel like it, then." She pauses.
"I've been trying to refine my magic," she says of her experiments. "By moving to extreme climates and isolating elemental energies, I can better understand their effects and natures."
"After fighting that man, in Spira... The one from Solaris, Krelian. I realized I'm not nearly strong enough, yet."
"...Yet."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
It might have been the more alarming if Josie had checked in regularly-like. But as it was, she'd settled her debts and then fallen in with a... particular group, one might well say.
If unofficially. The day Irving Valeria comes at her to ask her to sign up is the day she cuts her ties on that business for good. Fortunately, even if enemy (of my former enemy) was in play, there's been no move on that front, which is a relief. If she joined up, they might have even asked her to wear a uniform! Awful.
"Sure enough. I've been busy with this and that, myself," she says, brushing aside the business of what, precisely, she has been up to other than the immediately obvious. "And if I know you lot, you've done similar."
Lily, though, throws a wrench into Josie's easy verbal gait. "Hmm. That eager to have me back, are you?" Josie says, frowning. She folds her arms over her chest. "...We'll see. I've a few more things that need doing before I can consider that ask."
Lily, at least, moves the subject towards the what she's doing experiments on. It's not the usual sort of thing that comes to mind for Josie when she hears the words 'doing experiments' but rather--
"...Aiming to get stronger, huh. Always figured, here, you were strong enough. But I guess there's them that even your powers can't take out... those Solaris types are something else."
Not that she's met Krelian (beyond a passing encounter or two). Not that she's had all that much business with Solaris-types in a while, now. But she does know what she's seen in the past, and that's definitely enough to know the outline of what Lily's trying to overcome.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
It would've been strange, that's for sure.
"True enough," Lily says of how they've kept to their own business, too. SHe doesn't really expect Josie to be all that forthcoming, so she's not especially disappointed that she isn't. All the same... She has a certain sentimentality she can't entirely conceal, and in that, she says what she does. "..."
She doesn't make up an excuse, but she doesn't come out and say it, either. Instead, "Fair enough."
"You'd think. And there are people who tell me I should leave it alone," she says. "But so long as I can't protect him..." Lily shakes her head. "There's too many things I can't control. Too many things I can't stand against."
"They are something else. Something bad. And if they aren't stopped," she says, "They'll continue to impose their 'order' on the world."
"...Regardless, the desert is a space easily aspected towards fire."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
There's no such thing as going back. You can't go home again. And yet.
Lily's sentimental.
Josie is afflicted by nostalgia.
Quite a pair the two of them make, even as they make their attempts to shrug aside their respective pains.
"Maybe you can, maybe you can't," Josie says, addressing the more pressing issue of the moment. "But the way I see it, it don't hurt to try, yeah? Better than letting the inevitable come 'round and you unprepared. I daresay you'll run into that bastard again, the way your lot's fixing to go."
It doesn't take an oracle to see this particular future. They'll again run into Krelian -- or others of Solaris -- as long as they continue on their path. And they'd better be ready for it.
"I daresay a good lot of us'll be crossing paths with Solaris' like before long," Josie says, on that end. "Though, the way I figure, I'll just steal one of their ARMs. Then we'll be on equal footing! Eh?"
It's a little attempt at levity.
"Fire? Yeah, that tracks. Can't say I'd see it as anything but fire. ...Maybe some wind. Earth. Ice," Josie says, gazing towards the heavens. "There ain't many places hotter than a desert in the day. ...Or colder, at night."
She turns, back towards Lily. "So, maybe you can help me a spell. I was fixin' to fill a fletcher's request for some undamaged ocypete wing feathers, but I've ruined half the ones this had," Josie says, gesturing towards the corpse. "Split you the fee, down the middle."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
"Exactly. Whatever this world throws at us... I don't aim to just take it. And that includes Solaris. If I were the heroic type, I might have more to say about all the things they've done to others... But for me, it's still personal. What they've done to me, to people I care about."
"...Besides," she admits. "I have to be strong enough to find Father, too."
But Josie--Lily laughs. "You should," Lily agrees. "For that matter, I should show you the ARMs I've been working on. Not that I brought them here. Too much sand and dust."
The levity works! And for elements, "...Right. And fire and ice are both things i'm good at."
Josie turns, asks about a job, and Lily thinks about it for a moment. "Split fee, huh?" She's a mercenary; she's not inclined to do it for free even if it's for a friend. "Sure, that works. I can take them down without damaging a feather if you can flush them out."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie grins, lopsided as usual. "You and me both, Tiger. I ain't as high-minded as all that. Goin' after 'em 'cause they've caused problems for me's reason enough... and I ain't the forgiving type."
As Lily might well know.
"Your dad... yeah." Josie nods, her expression far more complicated than it usually gets -- pensive, nearly. "Yeah. You've gotta settle things with him."
Before they get worse. If Josie had been quicker with her ARM way back then, she would have solved so many problems before they happened.
"Oh yeah? And you ain't just trying to sugar-talk me on back?" Josie remarks, planting a hand on her hip. "But I have to admit... now you got me wondering."
Even for friends, that's not how it works in this business. And, sure, it means that Josie's going to get a little less than she'd hoped for, taking the job in the first place.
But better do it well and get half than do it potentially poorly and get less still. Turning up with fewer feathers or under the deadline isn't likely to make the fletcher feel all that generous.
"Sounds like a plan," she tells Josie. "Heh, just like old times..."
Kneeling by the dead ocypete, Josie sets about first harvesting the feathers that weren't damaged. Once she's finished, she stands and, extending a hand to Lily, says, "Well, let's get moving. No sense lollygagging 'round here, eh?"
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily knows that well. ...Just as she knows that she's moreso, for all the complication that tends to add to her life.
"I do." Lily has already seen them get pretty bad. Maybe it could've been different. Maybe.
"If you don't want to see a dragon Gear I guess you don't have to," Lily counters Josie. But she does have her wondering... And now, of course--
"It's not such a bad thing." Lily whistles, and Dog comes back to her heels, before Lily extends her hand back to shake Josie's.
"Right. No sense in wasting time."