2022-07-14: Wouldn't It Be Nice
- Log: 2022-07-14 Wouldn't It Be Nice
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Loren Voss
- Where: Macalania Woods
- Date: July 21, 2022
- Summary: Lan and Loren don't choose the easy way out.
=============================<* Macalania Woods *>============================== Macalania Woods - a shining maze-like forest overseen by strange, ancient, birdlike Beastmen who speak in bizarre riddles and weave light like silk. The crystalline forest is cold and colder still, the deeper one goes into it. The twisting paths are easy to get lost in, but they also lead to the mountains near Bevelle. Macalania is a distant, remote region -- and full of its own dangers. BGM: Final Fantasy X - Macalania Woods
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She left Hicalu in Guild Galad, where he plans to set up shop - well, not an actual shop, but he's going to mostly live there. It'll suit him fine, Lan thinks privately - the safety of a city, with the security of a network of people he already knows.
She can visit and check on him regularly too. Man, just... seeing anybody from her village would have been nice, but it's Hicalu. There's just something so nice about getting to be close to somebody again.
So why is Lan in Macalania Forest and not Guild Galad?
To be kinda frank, she doesn't like being underground like that. It's fine for an adventure, but how do people live like that their whole lives, cut off from the sky?
Maybe it's comfortable if it's the only thing you've ever known.
She's made camp for the night at the base of one of the forest's ludicrously tall trees, in one of the 'not-very-cold' parts. It still means she has long pants and a shawl on instead of her usual clothes, but the Medium of Moor Gault is taking the place of a campfire.
You see, she knows that Solaris frequents these parts. And while there's not really any way to know for sure, Lan knows that Loren usually ends up eventually having to go out and do grunt work. If they're lucky, he'll range close enough to her well-hidden camp for her to get his attention. If she's lucky, he'll be alone.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Grunt work.
It's funny. One would think that with the rank of Captain, he'd get a little more respect. But reputation counts for a lot, and there were rumors circulating almost immediately about how he'd managed to go from Second Lieutenant to Captain just like that. So in the end-- well, it wasn't that he still had no respect, precisely. Some of the kids fresh out -- young enough that Voss is just another name and not saddled with the scars of Engil's accident -- seem to look up to him.
It's a weird thing, the more that he turns it over in his head. He's responsible for those kids' lives. Did he look like that himself, back then?
But no, he's not out here today for grunt work, such that it is. Leaving the lake region is a small piece of hell, but he'd rather do this here than stand around in the ice and snow that is Macalania Lake.
Keeping the bear a secret has been a chancy thing, even outside that incident with the Major and Rachiel and Lydia. But at least he has a chance of explaining himself with those three. Oh, and Tabitha, who definitely knows but won't tell anyone just because it'll make him squirm in the wondering.
With anyone else, he's going to get a lot of questions. Questions that he can't necessarily depend on Leah to cover for -- not without some sort of hidden cost. Even if he's not the one paying it, it doesn't mean it's okay...
"C'mon. You wanted to stretch your, uh..."
The bear isn't walking as much as it's gliding about the forest floor, free for the first time in nearly a week to go further than the confines of his private quarters in Macalania (which given the constraints of this site are way worse than usual for a Captain).
"...Legs?"
His voice carries. Lan may have been extremely lucky this time around.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Sometimes all it takes is fresh eyes.
Lan also isn't much a fan of Macalania Lake, but she's fairly sure she'll be heading that way again sooner or later. It's a wellspring of raw, frozen magical power, even greater than that of Macalania Woods.
Fortunate for Lan that she's comfortable being wrapped in magic.
But her warm woolen shawl is more comfortable still. She's making another one by the heat of the non-fire, the Medium radiating heat within the sheltered confines of her tent. Lan sits crosslegged in the opening, warmth washing over her as she crochets.
She can see fairly well from here, situated near a fork in one of the many trails, but it's a sound that saves the day this time. Imagine how disappointing it would be if they'd passed by each other like ships in the light!
Lan puts her work down and creeps out of the tent, peering past some crystalline shrubbery until she's certain that Loren is mostly alone. "Hey!" she calls out, popping out long enough to wave at him. "Aw, you're talking it for a walk!"
Lan has never seen the cloud bear eat a tiny version of herself, and is ignorant of its terrible nature!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Frankly, he's been trying to blot that event from his memory. It hasn't entirely effective, particularly since he often wakes up with the bear's maw wrapped around his wrist or engulfing some of his fingers. Nothing comes of it, but...
It's all the more reason to take a walk around. Maybe it will take the bear's mind off of... him. Or whatever it is that's going on.
A voice breaks through his reverie. "Lan? What are you doing here? There could have been a patrol--"
The cloudbear has loped over towards her camp, half running, half drifting. Even its legs are only sometimes somewhat there.
"...Yeah. Guess I am," Loren says, shaking his head. "It's not like it gets a chance to run around back on base."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"Yeah, but I wouldn't have said hello to a patrol." Duh! She disappears behind the shrub again, but it's just so she can make sure to secure her hook. If the cloudbear decides to start playing with Hicalu's half-finished shawl, she doesn't want to lose any more progress than she has to.
Her camp is fairly well-hidden between the roots of a tree, the tent itself somewhat camouflaged by the disorienting nature of the forest itself. Light reflected off of the crystal trees breaks up its outline well wnough, though anybody stumbling right onto it certainly wouldn't be fooled.
"Come on over," she tells him, and ducks inside the tent to rummage through her things. Her camp kettle gets placed carefully onto the medium, water sloshing inside. "Want some tea? There's even sugar." No milk though, even in this chilly climate that would have preserved it perfectly.
Lan settles back down inside the warmth of the tent, holding the flap open for Loren and the bear to join her.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He makes a face. It's the usual sort of face, for him. But this time, he doesn't try to argue it, he just lets his shoulders sag heavily and sighs.
At least he'll be mollified by the fact that her camp is fairly well hidden -- the woods are a deceptive place to traverse, he's found, and the sad truth is that he's become perhaps one of the most adept of those stationed here at navigating it. Then again, he had prior experience with it...
He doesn't ask twice to make himself comfortable. The woods aren't as cold as the lakeside, but it's not warmer in a way that matters. "Yes," he says, when she mentions tea. The bear even trots on in (float-trots?) without needing encouragement, settling itself down near the Medium as if fascinated by it. Or maybe it just likes the warmth?
"So... what are you doing out here?" he asks her, hesitantly.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
If he didn't make a face, would she notice? Would she worry?
Once they're all inside Lan lets the flap hang down; there's enough room for fresh air to get in so that the tent doesn't get stuffy with more than one person inside, but all the toasty warmth doesn't go rushing right out. "Okay. It'll take a minute to warm back up, but it's better than having a fire." Anybody could see that!!
The Medium doesn't glow with heat or anything, and it's not so hot that being near it is uncomfortable. Lan pulls a pair of mugs and a small wooden box from her rucksack; tea leaves are shaken carefully into the mugs from the box. What's she doing out here, he asks her. "I was hoping I could run into you," Lan answers honestly, as if it were just as easy as that.
Which it totally was!
"We haven't gotten to talk in a while and I wanted to see you." They didn't exactly get to talk in Kahedin, the Trial Shrine of Ice. She reaches out to try and scoop the cloudbear into her lap for the moment, though she knows it won't remain. "You brought it all the way out here for a walk? I guess you don't want to show anybody on base..."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"If it was a real fire, you'd risk burning down the tent," Loren remarks, shaking his head and sighing.
If it was a real fire... huh. He can't help but reflect again on his own odd flame, if just for the moment.
It's easier to regard the Medium, pulling double-duty as a heating element (wait, isn't that the same one that she used with Moor Gault to save him? Is this really okay...?) after that rather than dwell on his own flame much longer.
"Really...?"
She'd wanted to... run into him? Has it gotten hotter in here somehow, or is that just him?
He'd thought she'd said she didn't have those kinds of--
But he takes a breath, instead.
"...Yeah, that's true." It's just talk. Just talk. No need to think... deeper about this.
Lan, briefly, manages to catch the cloudbear. It squabbles after a moment and makes its move to slip free, trotting off to circle Loren before returning to a spot where it can observe the Medium.
"Huh? Oh-- yeah," he says, as if distracted. "It's like that. I guess I should turn the guy loose, but it seems... helpless. And..." He looks at her, as if to silently complete the rest of his sentence.
He doesn't really know who would be best, taking care of it in his stead. It still needs to drink. It still needs someone to make sure it doesn't get hurt. Or scared.
It had seemed scared, in the depths of the lab.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She looks at him a bit oddly. "If it was a real fire, I wouldn't have it inside the tent." Is... is that a thing city folks do? Is Loren going to be okay if he ever has to camp on his own?!
Even though the bear doesn't sit still for her, she couldn't help but want to cuddle it for a moment. In the end, it's still not quite a tame creature. "Even if you turned it loose, there's no way to know if it would be all right. You still don't know what it eats, right? Sure, maybe it would be fine on its own, but... it's still just a baby. ...Probably." It shouldn't be alone. She understands what he means.
Satisfied that the cloudbear is out of trouble's way for the moment Lan picks her work up again, sparing a moment to check on the hot water. "It's getting there," she hums with a satisfied sort of tone, and gets back to it to keep her hands busy.
"...Back home we would be doing things like this every evening. Making or mending things, and talking. --Oh, have you gotten any use out of the gloves I gave you?" Lan remembers suddenly. "If you're going to be around here, you need to keep warm."
The whatever-it-is she's working on looks like it might be another one of the shawl she's wearing, cozy and soft.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Wait... does she think that he'd thought...? A flurry of expressions cross Loren's face: rising horror, shock, shame, even bewilderment at what's just transpired. "H-hey, wait a minute, I didn't-- I thought you--"
He shuts up abruptly then, his mind perhaps coming to the conclusion that saying something along the lines of 'I thought you'd be the type to' would be a hell of a dumb move.
But at least she is on the same wavelength when it comes to the strange chimera bear. "Right, yeah. It can't even bite or scratch. I don't think it'd get into trouble on purpose, but..." If it did, it couldn't get out of trouble, probably, not without help. "Yeah," he finishes, nodding. "It's dicey, keeping it on base, but it's better than the alternative."
And it's not like he can ask her, again, to take on his burden. If he gets found out, he'll figure something out, even if it means turning to beg aid from those he'd rather not.
"Making or mending things... seems exhausting," he says, shaking his head. "What about reading? Or playing games?" The closest he comes to her sort of evening work is catching up on the latest research, or checking that the supplies in the clinic are in order. Or maintaining his own kit. And it's not every evening. "--What, the gloves? They've been good, I..." He pats his jacket down, and pulls one of them out. "See? They're good here, just not by the lake." It's absolutely frigid there. He has to rely on the kit they gave them for sub-zero environments if he's out for long.
"So what are you making now?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Yeeeeeeeah. Loren shuts up abruptly, and a wry sort-of smile crosses Lan's face. "Fire goes outside the tent," is all she says to that.
The bear is a much safer topic! "What do you think would happen if someone found out? They wouldn't kill it, right?" Or do science to it. Something inside her chest twists at the thought of the cloudbear, experiencing half the hell that Lydia must have. After all, Gebler only cares about making weapons. It would suffer. "...Never mind. I think I know."
If things get dangerous, they'll have to find a new place for it. Loren would be sad, but...
She doesn't want to see it taken away from him. "Did you name it yet?" she asks instead.
Seems exhausting. Lan chuckles a bit, and works another stitch. "It can be. But it's necessary, and most of the time it's relaxing. Besides, there's still time for the other things. But we can't go buy clothes or anything easily. It takes a long time to make even a single garment." But he not only has been getting use out of the gloves she made, he's actually got them with him. "You're really wearing them!" she half-exclaims, as if Lan had almost assumed that he wouldn't. She's beaming suddenly.
"It's a shawl for Hicalu. I found him out in the desert and beat up some guys that were trying to rob him. He finished his pilgrimage but decided to come back out and do more stuff, so he's settled in Guild Galad for a bit and it can get chilly there." It's a name he's heard her say before - someone from her village, someone she had grown up with.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Loren just... lets his shoulders sag. Sometimes there's nothing he can do to win an argument, and the best thing he can do is give up before he makes it worse...
"I don't know," he tells her, which is a lie, because he does know. It would vanish into the lab, and he'd never see it again. Some might argue that it would be safer to turn it loose while he still can, but...
At least for now, it's alright. For right now he can know it has a warm place to sleep at night and all the water it can drink. If it actually gets dangerous, though, he's not without options. There are ways to 'accidentally' have a cloudbear escape en route to delivery, and that's before he goes to beg favors from those higher up the foodchain.
"Name it? Um..."
His response says it all, really. It hadn't even occured to him to do so.
"...I guess I should. Huh." He furrows his brow, as if this were a matter that requires his full concentration.
He's reminded, again, as she explains her life experience, of just how different his and hers are. Even when he was living in cities in Filgaia, he was able to go and buy clothes. It's strange to think about making your own, from scratch. "It sounds like it. It'd take weeks to make a sweater, the way you're doing it," he says, gesturing towards her work.
This, before her reaction to the fact that he's using what she made for him makes him fumble with the glove he's holding, suddenly speechless. He flushes, as if embarrased by her reaction.
"...Hicalu? I think you mentioned the name before. He's someone from your village?" He's taken a close, more scrutinizing look at the shawl. Hicalu, huh... someone she grew up with.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
He knows, and she knows he knows. Lan doesn't say anything about it, because what is there to say that isn't awful?
At least he's taking the idea of a name seriously, but Lan kind of can't believe he hadn't even thought of naming it before now. "Do you not give names to pets in Solaris? What have you been calling it when you talk to it?" She's seen him do it, there's no pretending he doesn't talk to the bear.
"It does take a long time. Definitely weeks, if you want something big enough to cover you up. There's even a superstition about a sweater curse, though it didn't come from the village - it's too hot there for sweaters anyway. 'Don't make a sweater for your lover, unless you're already married, or you'll break up.'" She'd had to ask for an explanation of that one. "But apparently it has more to do with hurt feelings over the effort not being appreciated, than an actual curse."
She can believe it, honestly. While she didn't totally expect him to wear them, if he'd said something like 'what gloves??' she was ready to swat him! But he's turning kind of red - maybe he's colder than Lan had thought and the feeling's just now coming back to him? "Hang on, the water should be warm enough by now--"
She checks and, satisfied, pours steaming water from the kettle into both mugs. Fragrant steam wafts, something herbal and a bit floral too. The tea will settle into the bottom of the mugs as it steeps, releasing a pretty honey-brown color. Lan settles back into place with her mug left to cool by her hip.
"Yeah. He came there as a child - we don't know where he came from. He didn't remember. So of course we took him in."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He pauses, as if considering how to put something, though ultimately he charges ahead.
"I know what pets are. But they're not really something we have in Solaris." They can have real plants, if they're First Class. Or fish. He's heard about some people keeping bugs, though he doesn't see the appeal at all. But you don't really name fish or bugs -- not the way he's seen people on the surface name their dog, or their cat. Or their horse, which is really a puzzler for him.
He has not yet once met an agreeable horse.
"...I don't really call it anything," he tells her, shaking his head. "'Hey you'? I mean. That's not a name."
The bear in question has settled near the Medium, curling up as if taking the time for a nap.
So it takes weeks... even the really involved kits he's done haven't been weeks -- not in the sense that he's thinking she means it, anyway. He gets the feeling something involved could take more than a couple of weeks. "Huh... really? Why's that?"
Lan explains, fortunately, so he doesn't get the wrong idea. "...Is that all? Hurt feelings..."
He has the distinct sense he might have dodged a bullet somehow. Somehow.
He takes the mug from her -- hot, he follows her lead and sets it to the side, taking advantage of its heat -- and regards her for a moment, as if trying to get a feel of...
"When he was a kid, huh. Does that happen a lot?" He knows surface life is rough, but... "In Solaris, we'd send someone like that to live with their relatives. But then, it's not that we wouldn't know where they came from."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
'Hey you' is not a name. But when he explains that pets aren't really even a thing in Solaris... well, no wonder he doesn't really seem to know how to treat it. "I thought it was strange that I didn't see any animals, even when we went to the shopping district. Even if the 'cars' mean that you don't need horses, it was strange to not see a single dog or cat. I thought they were all just... inside the houses."
But a society with no animals... there had been meat on the table at Loren's house. Mirza had prepared it.
It must have come from the surface, like the Worker Bees.
She takes back up her hook and goes back to work. A pattern is emerging, a loop at a time - something abstract, or maybe leaves. She doesn't seem hurried about it. "He couldn't remember anything. I think he'd been wandering lost for a while, by the look of him." Lan can remember it - the shadows around his eyes, and the way he'd gobbled the food he was given, and how he had cried when he was finally put to bed. "I guess if the grownups could have found his relatives they would have tried to get him back to them, but..." She thinks maybe his parents were killed. He's Beastfolk. Humans do awful things to Beastfolk, for reasons Lan doesn't understand.
"But anyway, he's one of us now. He even went on a journey! And completed his faster than me, that little brat."
Just thinking about him has Lan smiling again, cozy and content in the warmth. "Maybe not in our village, but it happens all the time on the surface. Something bad happens to a family, and only some of them survive. ...I guess, since everything is so close together in Etrenank, it's not hard to figure out where someone lost has come from?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Loren shakes his head. "Yeah. There's nothing like that up there. Space and resources... well, it's not like anyone goes hungry," he says, nodding. "But it's hard to keep it all balanced. That's why they restrict the growth of the Second Class." First of course is necessary. ...And so is Third, but for very diffferent reasons.
Because everyone -- everything -- has to feed upon something else. Third provides the labor to support Second and First, so they should be grateful for their sacrifices... that's what he was always told.
But...
It's a treacherous thought, even half-formed.
Lan explains why it wasn't so simple -- for more than the reasons that Loren had already expected. It's not like you could scan someone's genome on the surface and locate their family that way. And far more dire things can happen on the surface than in Solaris.
"...So they were probably killed," Loren summarizes, perhaps guessing at the reason. "Bandits, maybe? There are a lot of desperate people in the Badlands." They're called that for a reason!
He nods, at her guess. "Yeah. Someone would have known you, or your family. And even if they couldn't figure it out, they'd check your data and work it out that way. ...Everyone's personal data is recorded, after all. Right down to your DNA." He's absently touched a few fingers to his mug, as if to check its temperature.
Too hot.
They probably... have her DNA, too. They have most people's data on file, even those on the surface, he's heard. Everything itemized in a database, somewhere in the guts if Etrenank. That used to be a comforting thought.
It isn't, anymore.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
But not the First Class, or the Third... for very different reasons.
She just nods. "Probably. Whatever happened, I think it was pretty awful. He hid under a blanket for the first few days." Best to leave him alone, people had said. Give him space.
But Lan, of course, is Lan. "I think I asked if it would be okay if I got under the blanket with him. And he didn't say no." So Lan had crept under the covers. And eventually, Hicalu had come out. But she nods when he guesses at bandits. "Maybe. They get bold, especially far from towns or the Seed Cities. I dropped a meteor on the ones bugging him last week, but that got the message across." Needless to say, they weren't as bold as they'd thought.
Everybody's data. She'd thought it was a wonderful, wondrous thing when he'd first told her about it - a system of recording every birth, every death, in an entire city-state. Lan knows what a census is, though she's never participated in one.
"DNA... I remember that. It's the story of you - everything that makes humans human. The recipe for a specific person." That had been what she'd taken away from that lesson, anyway. Lan works to the end of the row and turns the shawl over. "I'm still not really sure what it's good for, besides identification. We can't just... go to the kitchen and bake a new person." Maybe she's taken the recipe metaphor a little too far...!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Hicalu had hidden under a blanket and refused to come out...
...Until Lan had crawled under with him. He's reminded of a collapse on a beach, of her singing to him. Reminded of all she'd done for him after he'd lost his memories. Of...
Of just so much, really.
"...That sounds like you," he tells her, looking away, unable to quite quash the strange, coiling feeling in his heart.
DNA... huh.
"Well-- yes, but you can't just... you need-- yes, it's instructions but it needs to be..." Loren starts and stops to say. "--Think of it like this. You're always having old cells die and new cells being born. DNA tells the new cells what they ought to be. And, well, it's not just that. Some diseases you're born with, because of errors in the DNA. If you can figure them out and what they ought to be, then you can fix them. So I guess it's you, but also sort of... your future. And your past," he adds after a moment's thought. "You get DNA from your parents, and they got it from their parents, all the way back to... huh. The beginning." He has a distant look on his face, as if he could somehow see the origin point.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It sounds like her, he says. Lan looks up at him, hands slowing. "You think so? I guess I always... I didn't know what else to do," she laughs quietly. "Sometimes I feel like I can't..." she trails off. Eventually Lan settles for, "Reach people, maybe."
Yet she can't help but hold out her hand.
"But... a mistake in DNA," she muses, looking off towards the wall of the tent. What would a disease like that... look like? Someone with their body twisted painfully, a stillbirth? The children that just fail to thrive?
Would someone know if they had an error like that?
"You can really do that? Fix... something like that?" Even with all the technology she's seen in Etrenank and on Gebler bases, Lan still finds it almost impossible to visualize. Maybe it's like magic. Shamanism, Crest sorcery, Symbology... It doesn't matter how you get to the answer, as long as you get there. "No wonder you became a medic. That's pretty amazing, to think of fixing something like that."
At length, she folds the shawl up and stores it away in a fabric bag along with her hook and the ball of yarn she's drawing from. No sense spilling tea on it before she's even had a chance to finish it. "Maybe you'll get a chance to meet Hicalu soon! He's kind of helpless in a fight, but if we get a chance to travel together it'd be pretty fun."
Lan has no idea that Loren is having a minor crisis.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Like she can't reach people...
That's how he's often felt himself -- about himself. So she feels like that too?
"..."
Naturally, he doesn't raise the matter at all.
"...No, I just meant," he says after a moment more, "that it's like you. Doing something like that." Reaching out, even in spite of...
How unlike himself, coiling in on himself. But it's not like he can do anything different. Maybe the same's true, for her.
He shakes his head. "Sometimes," is what he tells her. "Some things... what's gone wrong is so rare that they don't know what to fix. And figuring it out takes time. Sometimes too much time. But most people... Yeah. They can fix the stuff that generally goes wrong." Sometimes before they're born, he's heard, if the problem is identified early (which it usually is, if the child to be is of Second or First classes). "--Well, I didn't become a medic because I wanted to," he says, fidgeting where he's seated. "Though, it's not like they made me do it, either." They'd just made some strong recommendations, and after some initial persistence, he'd given way. Even his brother had said... it was good match for him.
Engil never thought he was military material from the start, though. He'd been right.
Carefully, Loren picks up his cup of tea and, closing his eyes, takes a sip. It's earthy, in way. Green.
Grounding, amidst the chaos within him.
"Maybe," he allows, setting the cup down. When has Loren ever been friendly, though?
Even right now he's feeling conflicted about it.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
He hadn't done it because he'd wanted to. Loren has told her that before. But he's good at it. "I guess... but I'm grateful that you did, anyway. Because you can save people's lives, Loren! It's so easy to hurt other people. It takes a lot more skill to heal them." It's something Lan has wished for - to be able to help people like that. "You work miracles all the time. It's... I wish I could do it."
Lan brings her knees up to her chin underneath the warm cover of her shawl. How many weeks must it have taken her to create that? What did she trade for the wool? She blows across the surface of her tea to cool it a little, and takes a sip. "...You would've been treated well if you'd grown up in Little Firelight," she says suddenly, looking into her mug.
"I don't know if you would've been able to use Ether, but if you'd still been good at healing you would've been important. Not in the way that everybody is important, but..." She doesn't want him to get the impression that there's a caste system like in Solaris!!!
"It's just, it's such an important thing. Sure we've got a few people who are strong at healing magic, and just about everybody knows the usual herbal remedies, but... I dunno what I'm saying," she flounders, when the meaning she's reaching for just can't quite be grasped. "Did you want to be someone more combat-focused? Did you want to lead an army?" To win back the favor that your brother's death cost you?
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He can't help it. He flinches, if faintly, when Lan tells him -- again -- that he can save lives with his power.
Elly had said the same thing. And maybe it's true -- maybe it's better to preserve instead of destroy. But it doesn't resolve the heart of his dilemma: that at the end of the day, this isn't want he wanted. He can still see it in his mind's eye: his brother, flames dancing over his blade as he mock-dueled one of his friends.
...That man had also died in the incident that killed Engil. That shattered Leah.
"It's... not," he starts to say, only to fall silent again. "There's-- if you survive, you can be healed." He pauses again, thinking once more of Leah. "Usually. It's... not that impressive. You can't win a battle by healing someone."
"...Not in a way that matters."
Not in Solaris.
He's glanced downwards in the silence that follows, regarding the bear. Is it sleeping, he wonders, slowly extending his foot towards it inch by inch, as if he were going to gently prod at it.
Lan speaks again first. If he'd grown up in Little Firelight...
...he'd have been treated well.
He's staring at her. Not in shock, precisely. He's not angry, or upset, or... anything that's so easily identified and labeled.
What he's heard, regardless of what she meant is, 'in Little Firelight, you would be respected'.
If he had been born there, that is.
And that's the one thing that keeps this from landing at 'upending his world' and leaves it instead at 'rattling his cage'.
"...But I didn't," he says at last, and sighs. "I guess what I mean is, it's not that impressive back home. Well-- okay. It's not useless. If we're stuck in a pitched fight, it'll turn the tables. And if someone comes back broken, I can usually put them together. But it's not... flashy," he finishes with a grimace, staring down into his cup of tea.
And here, he nods. "Yeah. Something like that. If I could lead other people into a battle... or seize a victory that turned the tide..."
If he could be a hero.
He settles back in his seat. "But they didn't even allow me to learn how to use a sword in school," he recounts, staring up at the ceiling of the tent. "'You won't have time for that', they'd said. And... okay, they were right, with everything else I learned. Maybe I found the time to work on it later. But..."
He still feels like he's playing at it. He's not as good as Engil-- not even half as good, for all the time he's spent on the trying.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She hadn't expected him to understand - or to, precisely, agree - but seeing him flinch at the idea is strange. Not for the first time, Lan is reminded of just how warped Solaris is. Winning a battle 'in a way that matters'. "What good is a victory if everybody's dead? --And don't tell me I wouldn't understand," she interjects quickly. "Because... I mean, I understand sacrifice, okay? I understand that sometimes people die for reasons - for good causes. But..." Lan lowers her mug to her feet, warms wrapped around her legs in a position that looks more self-soothing than strictly 'comfortable'. "But that's... but it's awful. And it hurts. And the people who are left behind hurt more than anyone."
Her aunts and uncles, when a child died of injury or sickness. Hicalu, after he was the only one left.
"...You want to be respected. Like Leah. Like your brother." Like the Elements, or Commander Ramses. She's looking at him with an unreadable expression, in the semi-darkness of the tent, a puzzle working behind her pale eyes. Lan isn't a brilliant intellect, but Lan knows people. Lan knows Loren, by now.
"...You could come back with me."
She's gazing evenly at him, chin resting on her folded knees. "To Little Firelight, if you wanted. You'd become an important person in the village, with your strengths. I'm sure you'd have no trouble finding someone to teach you to use a sword. Maybe my uncle Gil. He was a Drifter, years ago."
It would be wonderful, right? To solve two problems like this. ...Except that Leah Sadalbari isn't stupid at all. Lan pushes on, because she knows as well as Loren does that he won't.
"I could go home. Hicalu brought home cooking techniques that will help us feed the village. I'd have brought home a doctor. ...My journey would be over."
But... it doesn't feel good to offer it. Not like Lan thinks it should.
Because that isn't what either of them really want - a consolation, good-enough ending to the problem.
Lan isn't pressed to complete her pilgrimage. She's trying to find a way to save the whole planet. And the adoration of her village won't fix the things that need to be fixed inside of Loren's heart.
She waits silently, there in the dark, for him to speak.
[OOC] Lan Lilac says, "bluray vollage = village"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"You don't--" he starts to say, when she says not to tell her that 'she doesn't understand'. Instead, he sighs, his shoulders rising and falling with the effort of it. "Fine," he says to her, more frustration leaking into his voice than he intends. "Bringing people home, alive -- that's good. You can't win a war with wounded soldiers. But in the end, who is everyone going to remember? The surgeons and medics who patched everyone up? Or the commander who led the troops? ...If you're behind the lines, sure, you're important. But no one's going to remember you when it's done."
Everyone cares about the medical staff when they have a headache, or if they broke their arm. But otherwise they might as well not exist.
He just looks at her when she names what he wants, inside his heart.
"Yeah," he tells her, brow crinkling as if in consternation. "Doesn't everyone?" To not be the fool. To not be the butt of all the jokes. To be the one others look up to, instead of the one looking up.
He could come back with her.
He doesn't look appalled. If anything, he looks taken aback--
"You know I can't do that."
It's not even an option, even if he wanted to.
"I can't leave my parents behind."
Little Firelight is the first place Leah would look for him.
"And... I told you. I want to change Solaris."
He doesn't have van Houten's benefits. It isn't possible to walk away from Solaris. They'd find him, and then...
"Besides, living somewhere like that... with people I've never even known..."
To say nothing of that. He'd be starting all over, throwing away all the comforts of the life he knows. If it came down to it -- really came down to it -- could he do that? Completely sever himself from what he's had from birth?
But it's perhaps a moot point. He doesn't want to do it.
He can't do it.
"So that's... it," he says, speaking at last just to break through the silence that seems to have congealed around them both. "I don't want to." He pauses, as if sensing the weight of what she'd said to him, and adds, "Sorry."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It must be so easy for Lan to say it out loud. Lan, who is loved by her village, even after stealing the Medium. She can count on being greeted warmly when (it has to be 'when', it can't be 'if') she returns to Little Firelight. 'Respect'...
The closest taste she's ever gotten to what Loren knows as life was when she was with him in Etrenank. Not only a half-wild Worker Bee in their eyes, but Voss's on top of that. She didn't understand, then. How could she ever understand?
"...When people treat you badly, all the time, for something you didn't even do..." Lan lowers her eyes when he explains that no, he can't. He won't. He doesn't want to. But it's not because she's upset about it. She's actually smiling a little, as she looks down into her mug. "Even if we could have, even if Gebler wouldn't find us right away, I don't think... that either one of us would have been happy. We both want to make things better."
"But once you've changed Solaris, and we've figured out how to save Filgaia, you'll come and visit again, right?" There's nothing good for Lan in Etrenank. There are too many poisoned feelings left over, and too much plastic, and no weather. There aren't birds or fish or dogs or cats. But she'd like to think that Little Firelight wasn't horrible for Loren even if it wasn't the kind of comfortable he's used to. "You could bring your parents if they wanted to come. It would be kind of like a vacation." Since they're talking about happy endings, and everything.
She snuggles a little deeper into her shawl, cheered by the thought - no matter how unrealistic it is.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
And that's the punchline, isn't it? In spite of it all, he can't turn his back on everything. On everyone. Even if he could cut ties, no strings attached, he wouldn't do it. It's still his home. His parents aren't leaving -- he knows better than to even ask. It's the place where Engil was born and died. It's where Leah...
He knows what Solaris has done. There's pain and suffering inextricably entwined into the whole of Solaris even for him and it's still his home.
"...Yeah," he says, cup in his hands, staring down into the muddied reflecting within it. Even if he weren't hunted for such a decision, he doesn't think Little Firelight could be his home, not as he is.
But once he changes things, once they save the world--
He doesn't answer at first, lifting his head to gaze over at her. She asks if he'll visit her. Not the reverse.
It's fine. He knows.
...It won't be as easy as all that. Changing Solaris will take a lifetime. Or lifetimes. Saving the world is... he doesn't even know. But.
"Yeah." It comes easily enough to him, in the end. "Yeah, I'll come and visit."
As if it'll be that easy. As if it'll be solved in his lifetime.
But as long as they're talking happy endings, then... of course.
"Maybe... Leah will come, too."
He'll play along.