View source for 2022-03-18: How Does One Care for Bears?

*'''Log: How Does One Care for Bears?'''
*'''Cast:''' [[Character :: Lan Lilac]], [[Character :: Loren Voss]]
*'''Where:''' Aifread's Hunting Ground
*'''Date:''' March 18, 2022
*'''Summary''': ''Still at a loss about his new friend, Loren reaches out to someone more adept in the spiritual matters. Which is to say, Lan. And then things get awkward.''

----

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    He doesn't contact her often, not even by Memory Cube, so it's a surprise when Lan checks her messages and finds one from Loren. The last time, it had been a response to her own message - but this time, he initiated contact. Lan almost frowns, waiting for the recording to play. Is he okay?

    The Hunting Ground is a weird place, like most of Lunar. The monsters and animals here are ''huge''! But it looks out over the coastline, and the fresh air up here is ''amazing''. It's almost worth the house-sized squid that chased her halfway here.

    She brought lunch, because she figured she would be hungry at some point (and Loren is always hungry, or at least always willing to eat, and Lan isn't above feeding him if it'll make him less grumpy). For now, she's seated on the ground with her back against a tall boulder, looking out over the water. Her pack and that strange bow are leaned against it as well, the weapon unstrung - the string is coiled next to it, as though she were ready to string it and go hunting at any moment.

    Instead of preparing for a hunt or doing that craft she does with the string and the hook, Lan is just relaxing. A bird passes far overhead, wheeling on the winds. It's peaceful here~
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    The message had been a terse one, at that. He'd implied he'd needed her help with something, which after their last face-to-face encounter might be a bit rich. Nevertheless, desperate times, desperate measures.

    So he'd bitten the bullet, so to speak, and asked her to help him with something. Loren had said he'd meet her on Lunar.

    Specifically, in a wilder part of Lunar. On one hand, that means that he's (probably, given the stakes the last time they'd broached this particular subject) not involving anyone else from Solaris. But on the other, wouldn't he prefer meeting in a town or something more civilized?
    She probably remembers the incident with the leeches, after all...

    He'd said about midday, and it's getting a bit past that by now. Maybe he got lost. Or maybe something happened. Or maybe--

    No, no. That's him approaching even now, cradling his pack against his body as if it were a precious delicate thing.

    The pack is moving.

    "So... um. Do you know how to take care of bears?"

    That's a hell of an opening statement, Loren.

</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    Terse, even for Loren. Whatever he wants help with must really be a big deal - or maybe he's just extra stressed. They'd managed to rout Solaris from Guara Bobelo, after all, and while she's pretty sure Leah wouldn't come down on him or Tabitha just for that...

    Well, it's not like Leah is the ''only'' person above him in the food chain.

    But it's weird that he wants to meet out in the wilderness. He's a city boy through and through! Is it something super secret? Something even other people can't know about??

    Lan can't really imagine what that might look like, but...

    A wiggly backpack held close to his chest like something precious wasn't even in the top ten Imagination Possibilities.

    "Hi," she waves to him, before what he's actually asked her manages to filter through to her brain. "--bears?"

    ...He ''didn't''.

    Lan shoots to her feet, peering past him as though expecting he was followed by an entire platoon of Gebler soldiers... or one angry mother bear. ...But the coast is clear? There's not even a regular, non-angry bear on his heels.

    "Did you... is that a ''bear'' in your backpack?!" she settles for after a moment, staring at the moving bag, and then at him, and then the bag again-- "...If it's that small it's probably still drinking milk. Where's its mother?!"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    It hadn't been... great, per se. But it also hadn't been terrible. He'd gotten the impression that the effect had been what the higher-ups -- or what Tabitha? -- had wanted. The rest of it had been more or less typical. No one expects anything good from Voss, at least, so it wasn't as if he was in the line of fire over a bad performance.
    He'd run away, and that's what had eaten at him the most. Still -- there's only so much hay even he can make out of it.

    And he's developed a fresh problem with which to contend.

    There's no sign of a bear coming at him, much less a platoon of Gebler soldiers. Instead, there's simply the matter of whatever it is that's in his pack.

    He screws up his face when she shouts at him. "I don't know! For all I know, it didn't--" His shoulders slouch and he sighs. "Look. Let me show you," Loren tells her, kneeling to gingerly set the pack on the ground before him. He undoes the straps, and with some difficulty out squirms a... bear? It's a very small bear. It blinks muzzily in the light, cranes its head upwards and then

    immediately goes for Loren's hand.

    "He keeps trying to bite me," Loren remarks, wearily. "Well, or it. I don't know! ...But it doesn't have teeth. They're kind of not really..." He gestures, vaguely, then touches a hand to the white bear's body. Whisps of its form come away with his hand and dissipate, as if Loren were playing with a cloud instead of a bear.

    "It's... not just a bear anymore."
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    Oops. She didn't mean to yell... but if it's a real bear, and its mother is looking for it...

    But what wiggles its way out of Loren's backpack is no ordinary bear. She's not even sure it ''is'' a bear. Not any kind of bear Lan has ever seen before, that's for sure!! First off, it's... really white and fluffy.

    She crouches on her heels in front of it, pering down at the ball of unbelievably fluffy fluff between them. "Are you-- eep!"

    Fortunately, Loren doesn't seem too worse for wear. "What, it doesn't even have milk teeth yet?" Lan is not actually certain that bears ''get'' milk teeth. She watches him touch the bear, and traces of it float away... and frowns harder. "...It's... like a spirit animal almost. Like the guardian serpent, in the burial ground." But not as 'real', somehow. But still real enough to chew on Loren's hand!

    Lan reaches out a hand to pat the cub's back experimentally, eyes squinching at the feeling of her fingers almost sinking into it. It's deeply weird.

    "I don't know anyone who's ever kept a bear, but I know they usually eat a little bit of everything. Meat, roots, fruit..." Maybe this one is a meat eater. Lan tries to remember the last time she had bear meat. She must have been a child.

    She's finding a less squidgey way to pet it when something occurs to her. "Anymore? Where did it come from? Did something happen to it? --Wait, this isn't some weird experiment, is it?!" Did the research division do something to this poor baby bear?!
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    "It ''has'' teeth. They're just not really there," he says, nonchalantly as one can with a baby bear doing its darndest to rend and tear. The lack of any wounds on his hand -- or external expression of pain and suffering -- suggests Loren is doing just dandy regardless, though.

    "Something like that? It's like it's part cloud. Even its teeth are like that," he says, which might explain why its attempts at biting are doing a fat lot of nothing.

    As her touch confirms, the bear is part cloud. It feels... not at all like sticking one's hand into a ball of cotten and more like sinking it into a bank of dense sticky fog. It has some give, sure enough, but some give is all it's got: she otherwise has the unsettling experience of realizing she's got most of her hand ''inside'' the bear.

    "Yeah. I read a little bit about what bears eat, but it doesn't seem to be interested in anything," he says, omitting the part where what he'd attempted to feed it was mostly cafeteria leftovers. He's not sure what kinds of berries are good for bears, to his credit! "I got it to take some water, but that's it. ...But it doesn't look like it's starving, either? I just don't know what I'm supposed to do."

    Where did it come from? It's not some weird--

    "Hey! This has nothing to do with us!" he retorts, eyes widening once he realizes where she's headed with this. "I found it here, on Lunar. There was a weird manor I was, er... anyway, that's not important," he says, shaking his head. "There were a lot of things in there like this -- animals fused with, I guess, elemental stuff?" How eloquent. "Hostile, pretty much. But this little guy..." He glances away, as if the next part were hard to admit. "It just seemed helpless. Maybe I should have left it, but..."

    But his heart isn't made of stone, regardless of the element he might favor.

    He's still not looking at her. "I figured, I dunno, maybe you'd have a better idea of what a bear... thing should eat. Or maybe if it needs to eat?"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    It's the ''weirdest'' feeling. Lan is careful not to pet too hard, because ''inside'' a baby cloud bear is one of the last places she wants her hands to be. "It's not acting really hungry, though... unless it hopes you're lunch. Maybe it's teething? Or maybe bears chew on things, just like dogs do."

    She turns at the hip to pick up the lunch basket and unwraps what she brought. Two cornmeal muffins with butter, a piece of ham, a few pieces of fruit, and a bottle of water to help wash it down. Bears would eat any of it. "Bears are one of the most dangerous animals on Filgaia when they're grown, because they like human food. If you camp where they live, you have to hide your food supply where they can't get it." Her uncle Gil showed her a trick - hanging the food in a bundle from a rope over a tree limb. Lan had decided then and there that she was going to avoid camping in bear country. She wants her food to ''remain'' her food!

    She breaks off a pice of one of the muffins and offers it to the bear, though if it wouldn't eat for Loren there's not really any reason it would eat for her, either. "Maybe it doesn't eat our kind of food. It doesn't really seem like it... even belongs to this world."

    But the talk of manors and mutated creatures answers the mystery of where it came from. "That place?! Oh, you poor thing," she simpers at it a bit, and can't help trying to pet it again. "I can't believe there was a baby there. That whole place was disgusting--" She may be remembering the birds in the courtyard, just a little bit. "...Did you find anything else?"

    Ida had said the boy talked about in the notes was Ivan, but...

    If she tells Loren, will he tell Solaris? Will they use that knowledge against Ivan?
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    "I don't think it's trying to eat me," Loren says, then pauses a moment. "I can't tell if it bites because it's upset, or if it bites just because it... can." Does it hurt, being a cloud-bear? Or is life like that ok, and it's ''him'' that it doesn't like? Or maybe it just bites because it wants to bite. He's never been too sure with animals, honestly.

    It's not like anyone keeps pets in Solaris. Outside of needing to learn that people on the surface kept animals for something ''other'' than food and experiencing it for himself first hand, that's... about as far as he goes, disastrous horse-related experiences aside.

    By the Emperor, he hates horses.

    He's momentarily distracted when she takes out the food, gazing at it in a way that suggests some vague longing -- she'd been right about the food, of course. "Yeah," he says, looking back over at her. "We were told to leave bears alone. I heard there are some bears that can eat people." He's not sure if that upperclassman had been pulling his leg or not, but that bear they'd fought in the manor had certainly been large enough to attempt it. And that was before taking into account things like, say, owlbears. He scratches at the side of his head. "...Good to know."

    The little bear sniffs at the muffin bit that she offers to it but doesn't seem terribly interested in having a snack of that nature, instead poking around at the emptied basket curiously. "Yeah... I mean, it doesn't act like it's starving. It runs around, gets into things..." He shakes his head and shrugs. "--You went there too?" He frowns, as if in thought. "Maybe I should go back there. Maybe whoever made them left notes? There was a lab... You didn't find anything, did you? It was just weird in there." He pauses.

    "...Weird in a bad way."

    He snakes out a hand, blithly unaware of Lan's secret concerns, trying to snag one of the muffins. Maybe the bear's not hungry, but ''he'' is.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    Lan pops the rejected morsel into her mouth and nudges the rest of the food a bit closer to him so he can reach it easily. She did bring all this stuff to share, after all! "There're a lot of bears big enough to eat people. In places where it snows all year round the bears can even be white, to blend in better with the snow. I heard that those bears only eat meat, because there aren't as many plants and berries available." She's never seen one with her own eyes, but more than one person had mentioned them. Maybe there are pictures somewhere? She doesn't want to go far enough into the snowlands to look for herself. Mount Gagazet had been plenty.

    She sets the basket onto its side to see what the bear does with it, and rips a chunk off of the ham for herself. "Maybe it absorbs ambient spirit energy. Or maybe it's just magic and we're worrying too much." The meat is rather dry, good for carrying distances, but not quite jerky yet. Lan bites off a piece and thinks. "I didn't see any notes about the animals. There was... some stuff about human experiments." It's vague without being a lie. She really ''didn't'' see any notes about the animals.

    Before he can ask too much about those, she decides to bite the adorable bullet and ask a question that she's been curious about for... well, a while now. "Hey, did you have any weird dreams lately? Like, one where you were a little kid and you were in a strange place?" She can't believe he didn't know what a cat was, except that yes she actually can because Etrenank is horrible.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    Loren has already eaten about a third of the muffin by this point. Did he even chew that properly...?

    He swallows, making a face. "Great, just what I wanted to hear. This thing's pretty small, though," he says, reaching out to gently poke at the bear with a fingertip; it bounds away a few steps before coming loping back towards the two of them, planting itself onto the cloth as if to take a short rest. "Ugh. I knew I hated the polar regions for a reason," he says, grimacing further. "Remind me not to wander alone out there..." With the basket on its side, the little bear rouses from its flop and strolls over to investigate like a cat might, nosing around at the interior with some interest. Is it recognizing the smells of food? Or is it interested in just the smells in general, and anything might have done?

    "...That was one thought," Loren tells Lan after taking a few more bites, unwilling to mention that the person who had ''had'' said thought was Tabitha. "I mean, it doesn't seem to be unhealthy." He pauses. "I mean, I guess?" Tabitha said that animals aren't subtle when they're hungry. Maybe, he'll just know if it needs more than it's getting. "It drinks water, but that's about it. I wonder if it needs the water for its, uh, clouds..."

    Privately, he reflects on Tabitha's hypothesis that the bear-thing might be feeding off of ''him''. Nope, it's still not a pleasant thing to think about, even if he's not any more tired or out of sorts than usual. He discards this thought immediately. Cramming the rest of the muffin (fortunately just one third or so at this point because even he has his limits) into his mouth as Lan explains about what she had seen in there. Human experimentation?

    "...That's messed up," he says, after swallowing. "I didn't see anything that looked human, though. Just animals." Maybe... they hadn't gotten very far with the human part of whatever they were doing?

    It's not any of his business, and it's not like anyone's there anymore anyway.

    But did he have any weird dreams lately?

    He sort of looks at Lan as if she'd sprouted another head. "--What do you mean by that? I--" He pauses, clearly on edge. "Maybe? Why are you asking?"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    What if they told you to wander alone out there, Lan doesn't ask, because it would be cruel... and she already knows the answer, anyway.

    "I didn't even think of that. But it would make sense. And surely you'd know if it were eating ''you''." --He would, wouldn't he? They're not going to have another, more-adorable-this-time Primarch situation on their hands, are they?! It's just a baby!

    "I didn't see anything human there, either. Just the animals." The notes had said... Lan tries to pick up the cub and hold it in her lap, as though she wants to comfort it - or wants the comfort herself. It's not at all the same as a normal pet, warm and furry.

    But there he goes, and Lan knows she's hit on something. "You did, didn't you! I saw you there, in the Dreaming again. You and Lydia and Ida and that Ruth woman, the one who's a Hellion." Only she and Ruth had been their normal selves - or at least Lan had been. Maybe Ruth had been remembering sometime else, sometime long ago but not childhood. "I felt like I got to babysit again, taking care of all of you. It was a little like being home again. You were so cute as kids!!" Oh no, she's &#42;beaming&#42;.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    There's really only one possible answer, for someone in Loren's position.

    He hesitates, notably, at her question. "...Yeah," he says, not without glancing at the bear. It's not really eating him, is it? It's not possibly eating him! "I don't feel bad, or anything." It's nothing like the last time!

    The bear squabbles a little when Lan picks it up, but doesn't make too much of a fuss. Despite its apparent propensity for biting, it doesn't make any more to do so to ''her''. Hmm. "Yeah... maybe it was just in theory," Loren says, all-too-willing to accept that as fact.

    Fortunately, she has a potent distraction to keep him well away from considering that topic too much -- and it's to bring up a particular dream.

    He seems to choke for a moment. "Wait-- you were...?" he utters, dumbfounded. Shit, wait, all those people were-- shit, shit, shit

    And then she tells him he was a cute kid, and he demonstrates that when he blushes his ears also turn red.

    "Why," he ultimately manages aloud. Why does this sort of thing keep happening to him?
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    If it doesn't want to stay in her lap she won't be too put out - after all, it's not really a pet.

    "What's wrong?" she asks. His ears are turning kind of a really alarming color. Is this a white people thing? Would Gwen's ears turn red like that too?! (No, because Gwen is incapable of being embarrassed like this.)

    Sure he was kind of an ignorant kid, but he was raised in Etrenank! He wouldn't know any better back then. And he was trying to find Engil. Her eyes soften a bit. "You were a cute kid," Lan repeats, as if that's helping. "Why are you upset? You were even pretty well-behaved for someone that didn't know what a cat was." YES SHE REMEMBERS THAT.

    "It's not like you were the only person dreaming they were a child. Even Lydia was a kid once. And Ida and her cat were adorable. It was really nice to feel like..." She pauses, trying to find the words. Because they weren't a family or even anything close to one, but it had been... familiar. "I knew what to do. I used to take care of the kids back in the village a lot. It was nice to do something like that again." She pauses again, and frowns a little. "Well except for the part where that woman with the sword was just like 'whoosh' and killed so many soldiers all at once. That was super stressful and I thought you were all going to be next."

    She'd thrown caution to the wind again, but it had been worth it. And it was a dream anyway. It's not real.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    It doesn't help!

    He just stares at her, rooted to the spot as if she were a hypercarnivore about to leap out an devour him in one bite, his expression growing second by second more horrified. "I-it was just a dream! You're overthinking it!" he sputters, finally rousing from his cursed reverie. "Look, it's just-- they didn't have cats back home, okay?! And, we hadn't gotten to that part in..."

    Even he can't keep outrage going forever. He trails off, his shoulders slouching. "...Yeah. You really were used to that sort of thing, huh..." He shifts where he sits, as if uncomfortable, picking at his shirt sleeve. "It's... not that common to have siblings back home. Not, rare, or anything like that. But it's not usual." Not outside the Third Class, anyway, where it seems like larger families tend to be more common -- larger families or none at all. He's never really thought about that much, but an uneasy sort of feeling picks at the edges of his mind.

    He shoos it away before it can get much further than that, as if it were just an unwelcome pest and not something more important.

    He's silent for a few moments, thinking about things other than that.

    "That woman... I think that was a Shevite uniform," he says at last. It's hard to interrogate a dream that felt almost as if it was from someone ''else's'' perspective, but he's sure about that much. "I wonder why we all dreamt about her?"

    But he sighs, and reaches out for some of the ham. Even he can't be bothered to think all that much about this stuff when there's free lunch on the line.

    The bear, having tolerated being in Lan's lap as long as it might, finally squirms free and trundles over to the basket-on-its-side, to investigate it once again.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    She's never quite sure why some things seem to set off his embarrassometer. What's she overthinking? "I wasn't thinking anything except that you were all cute kids. Is that not a normal thing to be happy about?" Baby photos are a rare, rare thing - there aren't any of Lan that she's aware of. "Imagine getting to see what someone you met later in life looked like when they were little! It's not an everyday thing down here." Well, 'here' - they're on the moon, after all.

    "I wonder why. My mother only had me, but that's because she didn't bring my father back with her. She just wanted a child." Of course, Mana could have gone out again and had another child. Or maybe made an arrangement with another villager, but she never did. "I wonder why it's so rare there? Because of resources?" In a place that even counts plants as a drain on resources, how much 'more' must a baby count?

    Maybe it's easier in a few ways, on Filgaia.

    "I think it was. It makes sense, too. It wasn't the kind of uniform I saw there, not exactly, but... it was similar enough." The way she'd cut through the soldiers, all by herself - like a force of nature. ...Could she have even given the Stranger a good fight, Lan wonders suddenly, dizzyingly. "I'm starting to wonder... that's not the first time I dreamed about the singing. And it's always the same people expecting us to sing, even when the dreamers are different. Can a dream get 'stuck'?" she wonders aloud, frowning faintly. The bear climbs out of her lap and she lets it toddle off.

    "Maybe those are someone's actual dreams that they had once?"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    It's less the context (though it's still that, a little bit) and more that she called him cute...

    But also definitely the fact that she's fixating on what he -- they -- were like as kids. "I-- yeah, I guess," he manages, shaking his head. His face still feels flushed to him...

    But, really? "Don't you have cameras?" he asks, because he knows he's seen people using them among the surface-dwellers.

    It's still strange to him. Her parents didn't marry? Her father could just be out there, somewhere? Sure, his mother wasn't home a lot during his childhood, and his dad tended even then to work long hours -- they had become longer still, later -- but it wasn't as if he didn't know who they were, or never saw them. "Maybe one was enough," he muses, settling back where he sits. "It's pretty normal to just have one back home. ...How many do the people where you live usually have?"

    He pauses, wringling his brow as if he were thinking over her question. It's not against the rules to have more than one kid -- it happens even in Second households. But it's even less common there, as there are subtle encouragements to keep families smaller -- he's read enough of the Family and Life Planning documentation on the need for population control among the Second Class. Even in the First Class, though, he's never seen more than two in a family despite a lack of the same, all where he's heard that some Third Class families can have as many as a dozen.

    A dozen. He's not certain if it's true or just a story, but the mind reels at such a thing.

    There aren't population controls among the Third Class because...
    He glances at Lan and refuses to permit that thought to complete itself.

    "...Something like that," he tells her, because the topic has managed to become much more difficult in the blink of an eye.

    "Huh... It's strange," he says, almost happy to retreat to the subject area of his people's eternal enemies. "I've never really seen a Shevite. Not in uniform -- not myself, I mean." Of course they learn such things growing up. "They're supposed to be our enemies. But..." It's almost -- no, it ''is'' heretical, thinking about the fact that you've never ''really'' gone toe-to-toe with your ancient enemy, that instead most of your battles have largely been against...

    It's because the Shevites are crafty, he reminds himself, fidgeting where he sits before reaching for some more of the ham as if to quell such thinking. Because he can't know what they may or may not have had a hand in. Maybe he's been fighting against them all along, without realizing, as they use the surfacedwellers to their own ends...

    "Mm?"

    His mouth is still full as Lan speculates on the nature of that dream.

    He swallows. "Don't know. I've never really... thought that much about dreams," Loren says, shaking his head. "But... if we're experiencing the same thing, maybe it's not just a dream?"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    Lan just shakes her head. "A camera needs things to make pictures - plates and chemicals, and the newer ones use film. And you need a whole room you can keep darkened for that. Cousin Hannah has a camera that she brought with her when she came to the village, but it's hard to get the things you need to use it." They're far enough from any of the Seed Cities that 'bottles of chemicals' usually aren't on any of the traveling merchant wagons. Things like spices, alcohol, fabric, books, and medicine are more common. "I wonder if I brought her those things, would she take pictures again? I wonder if the camera still works." It'd be exciting to see a photograph taken, or to be in one!

    The salt in the ham and the muffin have her reaching for the water bottle in due time. It's crystal clear and sweet as rain, even if it's not particularly blessed or special (it's not in her magic bottle). "Mmmlm. Well, it's not like she was alone raising me, or I was alone, uh... being raised?" She frowns a bit, as if trying to think of a better way to put it, before shrugging a bit and pressing on. "I guess most of us have two parents? But sometimes there's only one, either because someone died or left or whatever. And it's pretty rare but sometimes there are three parents, either because someone combined families or three people really really liked each other and didn't mind having to work some stuff out. It makes just as much sense as two people, if you think about it," Lan continues blithely. "I mean imagine splitting your household chores between three people! It'd be way easier!"

    She may not be taking into account how many more dirty dishes and dirty clothes three people plus children create compared to two plus children.

    "...The people there were really kind. It was... different than in Etrenank." She remembers the bookseller, even now. "It wasn't divided up by class. There was a library where anybody could just go read for free. There was a cafe that I liked a lot." This isn't secret information, surely - any city has these things. "I wasn't sure what to expect when we got there, but it wasn't like Solaris at all. I felt at ease." It had been a relief, after Etrenank, to know that not everybody was like that. There were no Worker Bees confined to labor or their cells, no First Class secluded in mansions or parading their status. There had just been people.

    The Dreaming, too, puts her at ease. It's a known thing, as much as something like that ''can'' be known. "Sometimes people see the future in dreams. Maybe we're seeing someone's future, or maybe it's someone's past?" That would make sense, wouldn't it? She leans to one side, tilting over onto the grass and stretching out on her side. It's nice and warm here, and if it weren't for the whole 'plain full of monsters' thing, she might be inclined to nap later. "It's a not-place, and a not-time, if I had to call it anything. It's everywhere and nowhere. ...Which I guess doesn't really answer our questions, oops." She rolls over onto her belly and props her chin up on her hands. "But we went there before, to burn the Primarch out of you. So people can go there, and it can affect them even when they're awake."
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    He pauses for a good twenty seconds, as if he were trying to ascertain whether she's having him on or not. But no, no... she's serious. It really ''is'' like that, and it really is that difficult to manage...

    Life on the surface is ''hard'', he reflects, once again.

    "Huh," he says, as if considering the reality of all this for the first time. Huh, and that may have to be that.

    Sometimes there's one parent in Etrenank, too -- it's uncommon, but sometimes someone meets an accident or illness that even Solaris' advancements can't save them from. Or old age. Or sometimes, someone just doesn't come home again. It's unusual, but it happens. Usually they remarry. Usually the housekeeper takes up the slack.

    "...Three?" This is the part where Loren gets stuck. "Three, really? But... isn't that complicated?" He is, it seems, approaching that possibility for the first time: that households might unite in a way apart from Solarian marriage and home traditions, or that... three people might decide to make the best of it in a difficult world, together.

    ''...So you're not just limited to one other?''

    "Huh," he says for the second time, punctuating that bit of a revelation with a reach for his share of the water.

    The cloudbear meanwhile has finished its investigation of the basket and has plopped there, apparently taking this to be its private shelter for now.

    "..." It's rather the absence of commentary on the things she says about Shevat that might stand out. There's no arguing, no statement that she doesn't understand what the Shevites are really like -- after all, hasn't he realized he has no idea? No, it's more that he's trying to put this in context with what she's saying and what he's always believed. It sounds like just any other city -- and maybe that's also why it's dangerous, a part of him argues. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to hide their true nature?

    But there's also a lot that Loren has taken for granted about Solaris and its views about the world -- a lot of things he's gotten wrong as a result.
    There are a lot of things broken and corrupt in Solaris. Somehow, there has to be a way to fix it. What if--

    But it's only passing fancy. He shakes his head, as if to rouse himself from some brief reverie. Loren doesn't really think he has the ability to end a centuries-long detente. He's got to fix things some other way. ...Somehow. Maybe, if he were to try to throw in his lot with Commander Ramses' beliefs? He used to think them the most unfortunate thing about the Commander (well, after the inconvenience of the man's sheer physical attractiveness) but...

    At least the conversation shifts. It's not something he can mull over, right now.

    "Is that what your people believe?" he asks her, glancing down at the bear which huffs in a way that might almost be called contented. "I mean-- I've had some weird dreams. I hope they didn't ever happen, or will happen."

    But it's where they went to burn the Primarch out of him, and well, he can't exactly ''argue'' with experience. "Maybe, it's sometimes," he allows, the thought that anything he's dreamt about being something lying ahead of him making him as uneasy as if Lan had said it was ghosts.

    ...Come to think of it, that would be horrible. Something by one eye twitches. Great, just what he needs, getting haunted in his sleep.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    There's no indication that she's being anything but truthful with him, because she's telling the truth. Lan doesn't lie often (or well). "Well it's not common, but it's probably not that much more complicated than just two people. Wouldn't it be nice to have two people you could always count on to be there for you?" In the best case scenario, at least. "But I think you'd have to be really honest, and not be insecure. Otherwise it'd be really easy to get jealous." She doesn't really understand it - wanting all of someone's attention to yourself. Maybe it's different for other people. So many things are, after all.

    He doesn't argue with her about Shevat, and - thankfully - doesn't press her for more information. If things had been different, maybe he would have liked it there, the way she and Gwen had. He shakes his head like he's waking up from a daydream or something, and Lan tilts her head at him a bit. "Are you okay? You look like you remembered something weird." Maybe he's upset about Rahab being gone. He'd clutched so tightly to the roots of their influence, and in the end... "There wasn't much I could give you then," she says suddenly, like she's admitting a wrong. "You were holding on so tight to them, and I wanted to give you something you could hold on to in its place. But I didn't have anything better than my oracle paper to give you." She'd left it tucked between his fingers, but it had seemed like such a weak offering in exchange for taking away something that was bringing him comfort. She reaches over, and curls her fingers around his. "I don't know how to say it really, but I'm still here."
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    It's not common.

    And no wonder, once he starts thinking about the logistics -- once she explains what it would ''require'' to make work.

    So basically, it wouldn't work for him, considering all that he's insecurity personified. He's not as unaware of his inner workings as not to realize ''that''. It's still some kind of weird, twisted miracle that the person he'd had (ok, one of the people he's had) a crush on had reciprocated his feelings. It just hadn't worked out.
    There had been complications, to put it mildly.

    "...Yeah," he says at last. Yeah, it would take someone who couldn't get jealous or insecure...

    Is he okay, though?

    "...I think so. I was just, um, thinking," Loren says, shaking his head again. It feels like he's never going to get to the bottom of it sometimes, like there's always more to sift. Why is it that other people seem to be able to simply ''be''?

    "...'Then'?" he echoes, seeming lost. "What do you mean--"

    As usual, she reminds him.
    And then she takes his hand.

    Another time or place and he might have yelled about it, maybe pulled his hand away. Maybe frozen up. Right now... he doesn't take her hand in kind, precisely. His grip might shift against hers, but he otherwise remains still. "...Thanks," he says, averting his eyes.

    Just when he thinks he has everything figured out-- no, of course, there's always more to sift.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    If you can count on one thing from Loren, it's overthinking the things that should be simple and never questioning the things that should be examined closely. But then, that's what makes people different, and that's what makes them precious - the idea that no two people think alike or believe alike or experience the same world.

    Even though sometimes, it's really frustrating.

    She didn't really expect him to... take her hand and thank her and say that he believes in her or anything like that. If he did, he'd be a pod person! A Loren impersonator! ...Or maybe brain damaged again. But the way he doesn't look at her or tell her she's being weird again feels... well, weird.

    Like he's hiding something. Like there's something wrong with him after all.

    Maybe he's embarrassed? But then his ears would turn red again, wouldn't they?

    Maybe she's misread things again. Maybe he's thinking the word 'Lamb' and wondering how long--

    Lan frowns and clutches his hand a little tighter, peering at his face as if she could divine what he's thinking about from the patterns of his freckles or something. "What's wrong?" Maybe she said it wrong after all. "Don't-- I'm not saying I love you, remember? Because I can't-- not like that. But I'm your friend."

    Please be my friend, too.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    Why can't he ever have easy decisions? An easier life?

    However he looks at his predicament, he's going to lose something. Maybe he goes back on his word, gives up this weird and reckless urge to reform, oh, his entire society. He buries his head in the sand, lives a normal life. His family doesn't get any better off, sure, but it's not like they'd get any worse. He'd have to take back what he'd said to Lan, though -- he'd have to show himself to be without a doubt a gutless coward. He'd have to live with the knowing -- all of it, everything he knows.

    But if he sides with the Commander... and this fails... then...

    Her grip on his hand has tightened. What's wrong?

    "Nothing--I'm just..."

    'I'm not saying I love you', she tells him. Because she's his friend. It's not like that. It's--

    Animal panic arises, climbing up at haste from somewhere deep in his gut. He jerks his hand away from hers as if he'd touched a hot poker. His face flushes almost as an afterthought: shame, panic, embarrassment all commingling. The bear, which had been dozing, jolts upwards with a start.

    "S-sorry," Loren says, turning his face away from hers again. "I just..."

    Reacted, he doesn't say.

    "I've had a lot on my mind, I guess."

    If he betrays her, she will never, ever forgive him. But can he really afford to do what she wants him to do?
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
<poem>
    He panics and jerks his hand away like he's been stung. She must have said it wrong after all, or maybe it's just Loren being Loren - some kind of intrinsic skittishness, like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

    It still hurts.

    "It's okay," Lan tells him, even though it doesn't ''feel'' like things are okay. It feels like a sucking, hollow wound in her center; it feels like being thousands of miles away from her village and her mother. It feels like ribbons crawling across her throat--

    Lan bows her head and breathes deeply. She's just lonely, and he's just an anxious wreck. It's nobody's fault that she can't go home - not hers, and not his.

    "Sorry. I guess that was a weird thing to say." Even if Lan's not sure what she said that was so alarming.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
<poem>
    This is how it always seems to go between them. He still can't bring himself to look at her, at least not right away.

    Once again, they've only ended up hurting each other.
    They really ought to cut ties, he thinks, and not for the last time. One of these days, he's going to get her ''killed''. Or kill her.

    It's okay, she says, and he can't believe that from her. She's never been a good liar.

    "Yeah," Loren says, all the same. It's okay.

    It's not, but he's willing to lie about it to her. "It's fine."
</poem>

[[Category:Logs]]
[[Category:Chapter 2]]
[[Category:Chapter 2, Act 4]]