[He really had been somewhere else, hadn’t he? Curious, Hayame simply watches as he emerges from his thoughts (or… lack of thoughts?), her tail continuing to slightly betray her by swishing across the mattress. She could stretch… she should get up and compose herself…
But the bed is warm. And comfortable. And if she is here, and no one else might see her, unlike in the stables…]
Not like that.
[Before a hunt she tried to focus herself… perhaps occasionally what she attempted to do in archery training could count as a meditation, but… nothing that long or that peaceful looking. It seemed different.]
Hah! No, I'm not part of the church, even though I did live in a monastery in Fódlan for a while. This is a practice from Almyra.
[Though he can see why she'd think so. He had to do it in secret in Fódlan, since it wasn't exactly a normal part of the Church of Seiros' acts of prayer or worship. Certain people would start asking certain questions.]
I do it every morning. I probably should've remembered to tell you in advance, though, sorry.
[She'd warned him that she would need to roll over in the night because it would disturb him, but... This wasn't disturbing anyone. ... It's not bothering her. He'd looked... perhaps almost like praying, but not quite. (Though what did she know about praying? Real praying.)
If she falls silent... She will have to get out of bed. And if she gets out of bed, she will have to leave. So-]
Sometimes I use it just to clear my head and start the day in the right frame of mind. Other times it's like a way of remembering all the things I'm grateful for. Even the island of Springstar, the suns, the sky, the ground under our feet... The church here might worship Meridian as a life-giving force, but I put more stock in nature itself.
[Just as he preferred the natural world to gods or the dogma that people ascribe to them. He gets to his feet, picking up the cushions he'd been sitting on.]
Pretty much all Almyrans rise with the sun, whether you're from the steppe, the desert, or the cities. It's a little harder here when the sun never fully goes down, but it's always a habit I've stuck to.
[The right frame of mind... Things to be grateful for. The shrine priests spoke of everything having a spirit... The trees, the rocks, the mountains, the rain... It's not like she had a choice, but if she had to choose between the shrine priests or the temple monks... She preferred the priests. Maybe if she'd lived there long enough, if she'd had the chance... the Great Mountain that Matsukaze prayed to would have come to make sense.]
... I usually rise with the sun.
[But for some reason, today... She hadn't. It is almost embarrassing, in a way, and yet... If she just stays where she is, with her face still half-buried in his pillows...]
[The more he hears about mountain jinba, the more they sound like his kind of people. He finishes tidying things away, and opens the blinds further, now that Hayame is awake.]
Well, you don't have to today. Take your time.
[He moves to sit beside her again, the mattress creaking gently.]
It's not perfect, but it beats sleeping in a stall, right?
[Her remaining right eye squints slightly as more of Springstar's twin sun rays begin pouring in. Normally she is awake long before this, adjusted to the light... How strange it is, to still be laying down. Perhaps she has been on Alenroux too long. There, at least, night fell, and she'd grown a bit accustomed to it recently.
- She does not expect him to come back and sit beside her. She feels almost small for a moment, despite her larger size, with how she's still on her side and as curled up as a jinba was capable of being. Her first instinct is to grumble, to accuse him of mocking her, but. ... She does not think he is. Not that way.]
... I never said that it was more comfortable in a stall.
[She'd said... that jinba belonged there. It's not like she didn't know... that a proper house...
Her eye averts. Her dark hair falls partially into her face.]
Liem Talbott means for me to take the house he built in Alenroux.
[He stops himself short, even while he's visibly startled. He'd already talked to Liem before and knew that he didn't bear a grudge for what she did, but to build and offer her a house after all of that is nothing short of remarkable.]
Uh, never mind. What will you do? Are you going to accept it?
It could be many things. Even after she'd killed him for betraying Meridian? Even after she had condemned him in Communion alongside the other traitors as not worth trying to rescue or return to the fold? Even after she had run into him in Alenroux and demanded he leave, grabbed him, shook him, called him a traitor, demanded to know why he hadn't come to her if he felt weak, why he hadn't trusted in her strength-]
He is Meridian again.
[How she knows that, since when it had happened... She seems to almost say, and yet. She does not volunteer it so quickly or easily. When it comes to the house...]
[There are so many things wrong with that line of logic he doesn't know where to start, and for a second he just looks at her, aghast. He'd tried to gloss over the subject, but now it seems unavoidable.]
You can't just... He can't just...
[Are they both content to act like what transpired under the Tree is just a thing of the past, or is there more to it than that? He shakes his head and reaches to touch her shoulder.]
[For some reason, she did not expect him to react like that. ... But maybe she shouldn't be surprised. For all they had been through, the way that the events of this place had thrown them together... What did she know? She didn't even know he... he meditated every morning. And now he's touching her shoulder, like- What? Did he think she'd done something wrong?
Despite herself, she begins to look... ready to be offended. Ready to be blamed for something. She shouldn't be laying down for a conversation like this, but to try and haul herself awkwardly up now-]
He was still coming to Alenroux to work on the house despite going to Zenith. I confronted him. ... I cleansed his Discord. I brought him back.
[Even though she'd said that anyone who turned traitor was useless to pursue. That they could never be trusted again.]
[Claude studies her for a moment, still feeling like he's missing some vital context, but... it's not something she'd have a reason to lie about, either. He gives a sad smile and lets her shoulder go.]
...You two really care about each other.
[Despite Liem's perceived betrayal, and despite what Hayame had done to him in turn. It's surprising, but also, in a twisted way, a kind of relief, to know that someone cares for her to that extent. That someone would still offer that much to her after their own death.]
[The context is there, but... It is either shameful or not hers to say. She cannot bear to admit that despite all her talk of traitors and her hardline stance on accepting them again that she has hypocritically made an exception and demanded (practically begged) one of them to come back to Meridian (her). She cannot tell another man that Liem had called her his friend and demanded she fight to survive as a condition for his belief in Meriian, that he had wept in her arms.
So she says the parts she can more easily say.
She doesn't know why Claude's smile looks sad. (She doesn't know why she dislikes that he takes his hand off her shoulder.)]
... I have known Liem Talbott since I first was ripped to Horos.
[Did that explain it well enough? No, she knows that it doesn't. Her expression twists with frustration, struggling to be... anything close to open.]
He saw... what I'd done. In that space before hatching.
[Claude would remember. That strange field of space between worlds before they woke up in Horos, where their memories and pasts flickered and could be seen by anyone else. The place where they'd had to choose between the call of the shadows or the light. (He'd remember, too... the things she'd tried to throw in his face as proof that she was unlovable, that she had done things too unforgivable to deserve affection or any sort of normal relationship.)]
But he told me... that I had to keep moving. He waited for me.... He waited until I could choose the path of the light.
[And those words, that guidance, when she had wept and thought herself better of dead, the way he'd patiently stood there until she was able to believe him just enough to think that maybe she deserved more than the embrace of shadows and darkness...
Maybe that was care. Even if she hadn't wanted it. Even if he hadn't asked her to decide she owed him a debt.]
[Claude did remember Horos, what it was like. To choose the light was natural for him, but knowing what he does about Hayame and her past now, he can imagine why the choice would have tormented her. So to think that Liem encouraged her, showed her kindness, in that moment where she must have been sure she had lost everything, that she wasn't deserving...
He has more respect for the man, now. He also understands, too, why Liem's choice to turn toward Zenith would feel like such a personal betrayal, that she would feel she has no choice but to kill him, even as she refused to abandon his Shard. He's under no illusion that he would be shown mercy either, should Claude himself turn toward Zenith. Slowly, the puzzle pieces are falling into place.]
You should accept his gift. [He slowly lays down on the pillow next to her, so that they're eye-to-eye once more, and he cups her cheek.] You did deserve to walk into the light back then, and you deserve somewhere you can live in comfort.
[Liem also deserved to live, but he bites back his disapproval. It's done, and Liem has since returned. The rest isn't his affair to meddle with.]
[No matter how she had lied to herself (and many others), claiming that Liem's betrayal had been a crime against Meridian, against the force she had chosen to pledge herself to in desperate attempt to get back to her world... It had always been personal. It had been the first and only person in Horos she felt had believed in her... not believing in her anymore. The person she had made her moral arbitrator apparently deciding that Meridian was not the right path, that her path wasn't the right path, that the path they had decided to walk together after the incident with Manon... wasn't the right path. It had been someone that... even though she had never used the word... someone she thought might be something like her friend turning her back on her.
She had dedicated so much of her time in Horos trying to purge Kenoma out of Liem Talbott, convinced after they met the way they did and he had guided her to the light... That he belonged in the light, too. This time... This time they were supposed to be in the light together, and if she had to kill him to bring him back to it... It just hadn't worked. Not how she'd wanted it to, with him awakening at the Tree just... back. She'd had to become the biggest hypocrite in Kenos to do it, finally breaking down after weeks of pretending she was fine with letting Zenith have the traitor to demand (beg) he tell her what had to happen to make him come back. And she feels... compromised, knowing she would do it again.
She feels compromised that Claude lays back down beside her. That he touches her cheek and she doesn't push him away and insist that she doesn't need or want comfort. It is still hard for her to accept being told she deserved things that were good. She doesn't know if she'll ever believe it. Even if Liem said it, if Set said it, if Claude said it... Even Matsukaze had said it, but.
Hayame stares at him from up close. She can't answer at first, and the silence stretches onward. The hair he had brushed the night before is slightly tousled from sleep. Claude's eyes are so green. Like fresh maple leaves in spring. Or moss after the rain.]
I am taking it.
[Even though it is too much for her. Even though she doesn't know how to own a house, to keep a house, to be... someone with a house. She doesn't want to think of this place as "home". She doesn't want him to tell her she's wrong, so she doesn't tell him she doesn't deserve it. Her fingers are curling in the sheets in the space between them, wanting to-]
... Are you still tired?
[He laid back down. But she asks even though she knows he isn't.]
[Claude's expression softens in a smile, both when she says she'll take it, but also at the question, his hand trailing down the line of her neck. For one as stubborn and set in her ways as Hayame, all of this must have been an enormous change for her, and yet she's trying to move forward nonetheless.
He doesn't want to say that he's proud of her. It would have the sting of something patronising, or the suggestion that he played a role in what was really an accomplishment of her own. Maybe it would just be easier to suggest that he's happy for her, and grateful to those like Liem who refuse to abandon her, even when she thinks, expects, that they should.]
I'm wide awake. [He's here because he wants to be. Because she looked comfortable. Because he wants to have such an important discussion face-to-face, eye-to-eye, not sitting over her and talking down to her.] How about you?
[He is right, in his estimation of how it might go if he were to say he was proud. Even to hear that he was happy... it is a fraught thing. Sometimes she can hear it. Other times... like now... she feels like she has already peeled back and explained so much already, left feeling tender and defensive in its wake. Even though she knows... it is necessary, that they must come to know each other in more than one way, that she must... speak. ... For this morning, it is enough.]
... Wide awake.
[Her remaining eye focuses on him. On the softness in his smile. ... She almost wishes she could give him something like that. It would reassure him, wouldn't it? It would make him feel... Fingers slide across the mattress, hesitating... and then moving to brush a wayward strand of hair off his forehead.]
[He goes still when she reaches to brush away his hair, still worried that any movement might spook her off.] Lots of them, but not all. It feels like the more I add to my to-read list, the more seem to pile up.
[He's a librarian's worst nightmare for hoarding, to say nothing of the piles of books in his bedroom. It's probably a good thing Hayame doesn't dare go in there yet, or she'd be judging.]
I thought I learned a lot about my own world, but all the countless worlds here means there are countless things to learn. Sometimes, thinking about the scope of it all makes my head spin.
[And yet those green eyes of his have a certain shine to them, like the prospect excites him. Endless worlds and endless possibilities... He's glad pieces of them are preserved here in Springstar for him to learn about, not consigned to oblivion as Zenith would have it.]
[Not all, he says, but “a lot” of the volumes she’d seen just in his living room still seemed like an overwhelming amount to a woman who had been raised in a world where paper was precious and only the nobility and the rich were educated. Hair “fixed” she withdraws her hand… but it hovers close on the mattress, still, like it was just ready for some other excuse.]
What good does it do to read about worlds you will never see… ?
[She only knew how to read her name and a few of the most basic words, which she recognized by the shape of the kanji character more than actual “reading”.]
Or is it… “for fun”?
[It made the concept of reading for pleasure a bit difficult to grasp for her. Liem read often from the holy book she’d returned to him, she knew, but that served a bit of a religious purpose, and Claude…. Was his curiosity simply endless?]
It's true that it's fun. I like learning for its own sake. But it all affords certain other advantages... What if I learn something useful that helps me understand other Shardbearers? Or the people who live in Springstar and Highstorm? That kind of knowledge has all kinds of potential applications, and I want to stack my deck with as many cards as I can. Plus...
[He rolls over, just enough that he can cast his eyes up to the ceiling, thoughtful.]
When I go home, broadening my horizons in understanding how other people might live, or their beliefs, could help me with achieving my dream. Sure, I understand Fódlan, but what about the other lands around it, or beyond Almyra? Maybe the things I learn here can help me comprehend them better, when and if I'm able to reach that far.
[He's always planning for both short term advantage, but also looking far into the future, for any and all possibilities. A mind as nonstop as that needs all the material it can get.]
[Hayame has been known to look dismissively on things that were done for fun. Because she had never had fun, she didn't... she didn't understand fun, not really. It had always been something she had been taught was a waste of time, just foolishness when there was training and duties to attend to... and though she tries to view it softer, because she knows... so well that other people could come from better worlds, better circumstances...
It is still made easier by the fact that he supplies the region of strategy and advantages. It's not something she doesn't understand, even if it was a method that had never been available to her. If he was reading books like that...
For his dream. (A foolish, surely unachievable dream of a place with no war, no discrimination...)]
... When did you learn to read?
[Her fingers slowly curl and uncurl in the sheets near his shoulder.]
Hm? [His attention drifts away from his faroff visions of the future, and he turns his attention back to Hayame, quirking a smile.] Not a chance, babies can't do that stuff -- I learned when I was a kid. I had a tutor in the palace who taught me to read and write in Almyran. My mother taught me how to read and write in Fódlan's language, too, just in case it ever came in handy.
[Little did she realise just how much he'd come to use it later, but he's grateful all the same.]
[He says it so casually that it makes her instinctively bristle to defend her ignorance, fingers curling back tight and lips pursing.]
I don't know what babies do.
[She'd... seen jinba foals before, from a distance, taken from Armless broodmares after being fed from them and handled by grooms but it's not like she'd ever interacted with one. And the frontier stables weren't any place humans brought human children... not that that would be helpful, either, seeing as the only literate ones there were the stable master and his secretaries. Her time as a prisoner had been the first time she'd interacted with children when she wasn't a child herself and they...
Her fingers curl tighter, her knuckles paling, struggling a moment to prevent herself from once again dragging their conversations down into the muck and the dark. She just has to say something different-]
I am trying to tell you I cannot do it.
[She hadn't admitted it before, not really. She'd asked him what he'd sent her, but she hadn't... said it.]
I figured as much. [His hand finds one of hers, closes over the knuckles as they tighten.] It's okay. I'm sorry for assuming you could, before.
[They might magically be able to understand all languages here, but it didn't confer the gift of reading where someone could not. That was his mistake for thinking it would be otherwise.]
And while I don't know about jinba, human babies can't do much. If they can talk at all, it's just to make noises or a word or two. Little baby Khalid was probably busy tugging on his dad's beard and laughing about it over learning his letters.
[She knows he figured. But she had been cowardly not to admit it before and try to just dance around it. ... She'd been cowardly about a lot of things before, or she wouldn't have avoided him for weeks after their encounter beneath the tree. She was still being cowardly, hiding under his sheets in his bed on the floor of his home, feeling relieved that no one would see how her fist spasms under his hand before she unfurls her fingers again and slowly slides them between his.]
Jinba foals can do much more than human babies.
[That much she knew.
Before he had betrayed Meridian (her)... Liem had read to her from The Book of Numbers. She didn't even know if he really wanted to, or truly enjoyed it. She'd seized upon it after returning the book to him out of fear that if she didn't tether him to her with some kind of obligation that their bond would dissolve without debt to hold it together, but...]
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leicesters) wrote2022-12-06 08:26 pm
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But the bed is warm. And comfortable. And if she is here, and no one else might see her, unlike in the stables…]
Not like that.
[Before a hunt she tried to focus herself… perhaps occasionally what she attempted to do in archery training could count as a meditation, but… nothing that long or that peaceful looking. It seemed different.]
Are you a monk as well as a king… ?
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[Though he can see why she'd think so. He had to do it in secret in Fódlan, since it wasn't exactly a normal part of the Church of Seiros' acts of prayer or worship. Certain people would start asking certain questions.]
I do it every morning. I probably should've remembered to tell you in advance, though, sorry.
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[She'd warned him that she would need to roll over in the night because it would disturb him, but... This wasn't disturbing anyone. ... It's not bothering her. He'd looked... perhaps almost like praying, but not quite. (Though what did she know about praying? Real praying.)
If she falls silent... She will have to get out of bed. And if she gets out of bed, she will have to leave. So-]
... What do you meditate over?
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[Just as he preferred the natural world to gods or the dogma that people ascribe to them. He gets to his feet, picking up the cushions he'd been sitting on.]
Pretty much all Almyrans rise with the sun, whether you're from the steppe, the desert, or the cities. It's a little harder here when the sun never fully goes down, but it's always a habit I've stuck to.
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[The right frame of mind... Things to be grateful for. The shrine priests spoke of everything having a spirit... The trees, the rocks, the mountains, the rain... It's not like she had a choice, but if she had to choose between the shrine priests or the temple monks... She preferred the priests. Maybe if she'd lived there long enough, if she'd had the chance... the Great Mountain that Matsukaze prayed to would have come to make sense.]
... I usually rise with the sun.
[But for some reason, today... She hadn't. It is almost embarrassing, in a way, and yet... If she just stays where she is, with her face still half-buried in his pillows...]
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Well, you don't have to today. Take your time.
[He moves to sit beside her again, the mattress creaking gently.]
It's not perfect, but it beats sleeping in a stall, right?
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- She does not expect him to come back and sit beside her. She feels almost small for a moment, despite her larger size, with how she's still on her side and as curled up as a jinba was capable of being. Her first instinct is to grumble, to accuse him of mocking her, but. ... She does not think he is. Not that way.]
... I never said that it was more comfortable in a stall.
[She'd said... that jinba belonged there. It's not like she didn't know... that a proper house...
Her eye averts. Her dark hair falls partially into her face.]
Liem Talbott means for me to take the house he built in Alenroux.
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[He stops himself short, even while he's visibly startled. He'd already talked to Liem before and knew that he didn't bear a grudge for what she did, but to build and offer her a house after all of that is nothing short of remarkable.]
Uh, never mind. What will you do? Are you going to accept it?
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It could be many things. Even after she'd killed him for betraying Meridian? Even after she had condemned him in Communion alongside the other traitors as not worth trying to rescue or return to the fold? Even after she had run into him in Alenroux and demanded he leave, grabbed him, shook him, called him a traitor, demanded to know why he hadn't come to her if he felt weak, why he hadn't trusted in her strength-]
He is Meridian again.
[How she knows that, since when it had happened... She seems to almost say, and yet. She does not volunteer it so quickly or easily. When it comes to the house...]
... I no longer have any reason to refuse.
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You can't just... He can't just...
[Are they both content to act like what transpired under the Tree is just a thing of the past, or is there more to it than that? He shakes his head and reaches to touch her shoulder.]
Tell me what happened. Please.
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Despite herself, she begins to look... ready to be offended. Ready to be blamed for something. She shouldn't be laying down for a conversation like this, but to try and haul herself awkwardly up now-]
He was still coming to Alenroux to work on the house despite going to Zenith. I confronted him. ... I cleansed his Discord. I brought him back.
[Even though she'd said that anyone who turned traitor was useless to pursue. That they could never be trusted again.]
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...You two really care about each other.
[Despite Liem's perceived betrayal, and despite what Hayame had done to him in turn. It's surprising, but also, in a twisted way, a kind of relief, to know that someone cares for her to that extent. That someone would still offer that much to her after their own death.]
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So she says the parts she can more easily say.
She doesn't know why Claude's smile looks sad. (She doesn't know why she dislikes that he takes his hand off her shoulder.)]
... I have known Liem Talbott since I first was ripped to Horos.
[Did that explain it well enough? No, she knows that it doesn't. Her expression twists with frustration, struggling to be... anything close to open.]
He saw... what I'd done. In that space before hatching.
[Claude would remember. That strange field of space between worlds before they woke up in Horos, where their memories and pasts flickered and could be seen by anyone else. The place where they'd had to choose between the call of the shadows or the light. (He'd remember, too... the things she'd tried to throw in his face as proof that she was unlovable, that she had done things too unforgivable to deserve affection or any sort of normal relationship.)]
But he told me... that I had to keep moving. He waited for me.... He waited until I could choose the path of the light.
[And those words, that guidance, when she had wept and thought herself better of dead, the way he'd patiently stood there until she was able to believe him just enough to think that maybe she deserved more than the embrace of shadows and darkness...
Maybe that was care. Even if she hadn't wanted it. Even if he hadn't asked her to decide she owed him a debt.]
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He has more respect for the man, now. He also understands, too, why Liem's choice to turn toward Zenith would feel like such a personal betrayal, that she would feel she has no choice but to kill him, even as she refused to abandon his Shard. He's under no illusion that he would be shown mercy either, should Claude himself turn toward Zenith. Slowly, the puzzle pieces are falling into place.]
You should accept his gift. [He slowly lays down on the pillow next to her, so that they're eye-to-eye once more, and he cups her cheek.] You did deserve to walk into the light back then, and you deserve somewhere you can live in comfort.
[Liem also deserved to live, but he bites back his disapproval. It's done, and Liem has since returned. The rest isn't his affair to meddle with.]
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She had dedicated so much of her time in Horos trying to purge Kenoma out of Liem Talbott, convinced after they met the way they did and he had guided her to the light... That he belonged in the light, too. This time... This time they were supposed to be in the light together, and if she had to kill him to bring him back to it... It just hadn't worked. Not how she'd wanted it to, with him awakening at the Tree just... back. She'd had to become the biggest hypocrite in Kenos to do it, finally breaking down after weeks of pretending she was fine with letting Zenith have the traitor to demand (beg) he tell her what had to happen to make him come back. And she feels... compromised, knowing she would do it again.
She feels compromised that Claude lays back down beside her. That he touches her cheek and she doesn't push him away and insist that she doesn't need or want comfort. It is still hard for her to accept being told she deserved things that were good. She doesn't know if she'll ever believe it. Even if Liem said it, if Set said it, if Claude said it... Even Matsukaze had said it, but.
Hayame stares at him from up close. She can't answer at first, and the silence stretches onward. The hair he had brushed the night before is slightly tousled from sleep. Claude's eyes are so green. Like fresh maple leaves in spring. Or moss after the rain.]
I am taking it.
[Even though it is too much for her. Even though she doesn't know how to own a house, to keep a house, to be... someone with a house. She doesn't want to think of this place as "home". She doesn't want him to tell her she's wrong, so she doesn't tell him she doesn't deserve it. Her fingers are curling in the sheets in the space between them, wanting to-]
... Are you still tired?
[He laid back down. But she asks even though she knows he isn't.]
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He doesn't want to say that he's proud of her. It would have the sting of something patronising, or the suggestion that he played a role in what was really an accomplishment of her own. Maybe it would just be easier to suggest that he's happy for her, and grateful to those like Liem who refuse to abandon her, even when she thinks, expects, that they should.]
I'm wide awake. [He's here because he wants to be. Because she looked comfortable. Because he wants to have such an important discussion face-to-face, eye-to-eye, not sitting over her and talking down to her.] How about you?
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... Wide awake.
[Her remaining eye focuses on him. On the softness in his smile. ... She almost wishes she could give him something like that. It would reassure him, wouldn't it? It would make him feel... Fingers slide across the mattress, hesitating... and then moving to brush a wayward strand of hair off his forehead.]
... Have you read all the books in this room?
[She hadn't known he meditated every morning.]
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[He's a librarian's worst nightmare for hoarding, to say nothing of the piles of books in his bedroom. It's probably a good thing Hayame doesn't dare go in there yet, or she'd be judging.]
I thought I learned a lot about my own world, but all the countless worlds here means there are countless things to learn. Sometimes, thinking about the scope of it all makes my head spin.
[And yet those green eyes of his have a certain shine to them, like the prospect excites him. Endless worlds and endless possibilities... He's glad pieces of them are preserved here in Springstar for him to learn about, not consigned to oblivion as Zenith would have it.]
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What good does it do to read about worlds you will never see… ?
[She only knew how to read her name and a few of the most basic words, which she recognized by the shape of the kanji character more than actual “reading”.]
Or is it… “for fun”?
[It made the concept of reading for pleasure a bit difficult to grasp for her. Liem read often from the holy book she’d returned to him, she knew, but that served a bit of a religious purpose, and Claude…. Was his curiosity simply endless?]
no subject
[He rolls over, just enough that he can cast his eyes up to the ceiling, thoughtful.]
When I go home, broadening my horizons in understanding how other people might live, or their beliefs, could help me with achieving my dream. Sure, I understand Fódlan, but what about the other lands around it, or beyond Almyra? Maybe the things I learn here can help me comprehend them better, when and if I'm able to reach that far.
[He's always planning for both short term advantage, but also looking far into the future, for any and all possibilities. A mind as nonstop as that needs all the material it can get.]
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It is still made easier by the fact that he supplies the region of strategy and advantages. It's not something she doesn't understand, even if it was a method that had never been available to her. If he was reading books like that...
For his dream. (A foolish, surely unachievable dream of a place with no war, no discrimination...)]
... When did you learn to read?
[Her fingers slowly curl and uncurl in the sheets near his shoulder.]
When you were a baby... ?
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[Little did she realise just how much he'd come to use it later, but he's grateful all the same.]
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I don't know what babies do.
[She'd... seen jinba foals before, from a distance, taken from Armless broodmares after being fed from them and handled by grooms but it's not like she'd ever interacted with one. And the frontier stables weren't any place humans brought human children... not that that would be helpful, either, seeing as the only literate ones there were the stable master and his secretaries. Her time as a prisoner had been the first time she'd interacted with children when she wasn't a child herself and they...
Her fingers curl tighter, her knuckles paling, struggling a moment to prevent herself from once again dragging their conversations down into the muck and the dark. She just has to say something different-]
I am trying to tell you I cannot do it.
[She hadn't admitted it before, not really. She'd asked him what he'd sent her, but she hadn't... said it.]
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[They might magically be able to understand all languages here, but it didn't confer the gift of reading where someone could not. That was his mistake for thinking it would be otherwise.]
And while I don't know about jinba, human babies can't do much. If they can talk at all, it's just to make noises or a word or two. Little baby Khalid was probably busy tugging on his dad's beard and laughing about it over learning his letters.
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[She knows he figured. But she had been cowardly not to admit it before and try to just dance around it. ... She'd been cowardly about a lot of things before, or she wouldn't have avoided him for weeks after their encounter beneath the tree. She was still being cowardly, hiding under his sheets in his bed on the floor of his home, feeling relieved that no one would see how her fist spasms under his hand before she unfurls her fingers again and slowly slides them between his.]
Jinba foals can do much more than human babies.
[That much she knew.
Before he had betrayed Meridian (her)... Liem had read to her from The Book of Numbers. She didn't even know if he really wanted to, or truly enjoyed it. She'd seized upon it after returning the book to him out of fear that if she didn't tether him to her with some kind of obligation that their bond would dissolve without debt to hold it together, but...]
... Is what you are reading now interesting?
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