[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...]
Oh, definitely. I've been reading about how some worlds have flying machines, and they can use them for transport, combat, or espionage. Pretty impressive, right? It seems way beyond what anything like a corps of wyvern riders could do.
[It's way beyond the technology of his world, and has limited to no use in Kenos, so it's reading that falls under the 'for fun' category. Though reading about it, too, helps him at least start to visualise a little how someone like Amos might be able to reach outer space.]
There are pictures and diagrams, too, so you'd be able to take a look, if you're curious.
[If she were being honest... Hayame was not that interested in flying machines. If jinba were meant to fly, she assumes they would have been born with wings. She does not like heights if she doesn't have solid ground beneath her hooves. ... But it's not really about whether she thinks the topic is interesting or not.
It's about... trying. She's trying. Trying to accept his affection. To trust. To be... something more than just a warrior.]
... The pictures would mean very little without you reading the words aloud along with them.
Then I guess I'll have to treat you to a bedtime story next time you come over. Deal?
[He realises she probably meant that as more of a statement of fact than a request, but it doesn't stop him from taking that and running with it nonetheless.]
Of course, it doesn't have to be something I'm reading right now. If there's a subject you're interested in, I could read that, too.
[He wasn't supposed to volunteer to read something she was interested in. It was supposed to be... not an inconvenience to him, that was the whole point in having it be just the thing he was going to be reading already...]
I am not the scholar.
[So she tries to put the responsibility of the choice back on him, even though she... probably could come up with something. It wasn't like she was stupid, just... illiterate, and without ever having had the luxury of time to do things like learn beyond the scope of archery and hunt and servitude. She was surely interested in... She could surely think of...]
- And you will not be calling them "bedtime stories".
How about... an evening of intellectual titillation?
[Somehow that's worse... but he doesn't seem to care, holding back a laugh and pressing an impish kiss to Hayame's forehead. As ever, he finds his own jokes funny, even if she won't.]
And if it doesn't interest you, it might just bore you to sleep. I promise I won't be offended if that happens.
[The moment his lips press to her forehead (what was- did he like her forehead in particular for some reason?) Hayame's cheeks grow ruddy, the corners of her lips twitching downward.]
That makes it sound like something lewd...
[She knows he's just joking, but she can't allow it to go without saying?!]
[A her problem? A her problem? Knowing he's joking protects him from her ire the way another person would not receive grace, but her cheeks still grow red with the idea that she could be accused of having a lewd mind. After everything-
After... after what she'd done her last heat, struggling with how discord made her season so much worse... She'd almost reached out to him. She almost had. But he... he was a Stargazer. It would only have gotten worse. And instead...
She suddenly looks... something else, on top of embarrassed. Guilty? Sad? Something that makes her turn more into her (his) pillow, muttering,]
I am not that perverse.
[... Not now. But what is she going to do be in two weeks?]
[He picks up that subtle shift in her mood, and he sits up slightly, propping himself up on an elbow to get a better look at her.]
Come on, I was just teasing. What's the matter?
[She looks... upset? But not angry, for a change. He can't think of what might have happened to cause it, when she knows full well by now that he's often not serious, so he reaches to gently touch her shoulder.]
[... She definitely cannot tell him. Even if it occurred before she had agreed to attempt to accept his affections, before she had been forced to admit that, even if she did not know if her feelings matched his, there was something there she could not deny...
Men had their pride, did they not? And her own reputation...
Hayame struggles to answer him. Should she warn him now, that she will not be able to meet with him some times? Should she try to prevent him from teasing her about certain things? She does not know. What she does know... is she feels she has made so many errors since she arrived at his home last night. That despite her intent to be... normal, to be... amiable... that she has failed, and he has had to stop and comfort her, or find himself at the mercy of her ire...
Her fingers tighten on his where he had taken hers, before, and instead of providing words... she pulls his hand to her mouth and kisses his knuckles instead. Ring finger, middle, pointer... It buys her time until finally,]
[The way she kisses his knuckles, slowly and deliberately, makes him all but melt, his expression softening through the worry, until he lies back down beside her. He'd almost forgotten what he asked; almost, but not quite.]
You know you can talk to me, right? About anything. I promised I'd be open with you from now on, so I'd like it if it could go both ways.
[He'd like it if she didn't keep secrets too, when there's something clearly on her mind. It's a big ask, of course, for someone who struggles to express herself as Hayame does, but if he can change, he hopes she can, too.]
[Perhaps it was cruel of her to do that... when she does it because she knows it will distract him. It distracts her, too. He has... good hands. Despite his status, they are an archer's hands, like hers. They are strong for a human. He smells good.
And to cover her lack of answer when he gently pushes for one... She goes back to it. She'd neglected his little finger, his thumb... and then she is just pressing his knuckles to her lips, silencing herself, her eye lidded and half-hidden by the dark hood of her lashes.
What can she give him, that is still true but is not... that? It takes her a while, but finally,]
... I have failed at several things I wished to do, coming here.
[Her words whisper warm breath and hints of her lips against his skin. Her cheeks are still ruddy. Her hair is still disheveled from sleep.
And the answer is still honest, even if it wasn't everything.]
[You haven't failed at anything, is what he wants to say instinctively, but he knows it would be a reflexive response born of the way she looks right now. The way she's kissing him. The way he feels so hopelessly, stupidly, paralysing all thought...
But-- no. He forces himself to focus on what she's saying, his soft expression faltering a little.]
How did you fail?
[He asks it in a soft murmur. Just coming here, spending time with him, not fleeing or denying-- wasn't that enough?]
[She does not really want to tell him, because failure is not something she has ever been conditioned to accept or view as anything but shameful, no matter how small or petty the failure. But his voice is soft, he entreats her for an answer…]
… I meant not to bring up anything we would fight about.
[The ambassadors movement, whether or not his intent to come to her world was believable to her…]
I did not mean to make you feel as if you needed comfort me.
[Her brother, Liem Talbott…]
I meant to…
[She bites her lip, and the pink color on her cheeks grows darker, her eye averting, her forelegs curling with a soft click of hoof on hoof. She’d thought… he deserved some sort of proof of her intent, perhaps a reward for… for dealing with her… something that would make up for the month she had left him waiting for word? (And maybe she had wanted to see for herself, if she-) She didn’t know-
And her eye shifts back to look at him, struggling to just say it-]
… Do more.
[Her lips press again to his knuckles, her gaze averting again.]
But... it's okay. I want to talk about things with you. Even if it's difficult, or painful, I can get to know you better. If I want to comfort you, that's my choice, too.
[She didn't make him respond that way. He simply cared as a matter of course, and it's better than the alternative of discussing nothing at all. One of his legs moves to settle against a foreleg, as if to offer further comfort, more of his presence.]
Let's just take things a little at a time. You can come back here whenever you want, and I'll be here. [So anything she wants to say, do, express... She can do it when she's ready. This isn't like when he kissed her under the tree, when he thought there had been no time for anything at all, to explain himself. She can take things as slowly as she needs.]
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leicesters) wrote2022-12-06 08:26 pm
no subject
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?]
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[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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[It's way beyond the technology of his world, and has limited to no use in Kenos, so it's reading that falls under the 'for fun' category. Though reading about it, too, helps him at least start to visualise a little how someone like Amos might be able to reach outer space.]
There are pictures and diagrams, too, so you'd be able to take a look, if you're curious.
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It's about... trying. She's trying. Trying to accept his affection. To trust. To be... something more than just a warrior.]
... The pictures would mean very little without you reading the words aloud along with them.
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[He realises she probably meant that as more of a statement of fact than a request, but it doesn't stop him from taking that and running with it nonetheless.]
Of course, it doesn't have to be something I'm reading right now. If there's a subject you're interested in, I could read that, too.
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I am not the scholar.
[So she tries to put the responsibility of the choice back on him, even though she... probably could come up with something. It wasn't like she was stupid, just... illiterate, and without ever having had the luxury of time to do things like learn beyond the scope of archery and hunt and servitude. She was surely interested in... She could surely think of...]
- And you will not be calling them "bedtime stories".
[For obvious "not a filly" reasons.]
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[Somehow that's worse... but he doesn't seem to care, holding back a laugh and pressing an impish kiss to Hayame's forehead. As ever, he finds his own jokes funny, even if she won't.]
And if it doesn't interest you, it might just bore you to sleep. I promise I won't be offended if that happens.
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That makes it sound like something lewd...
[She knows he's just joking, but she can't allow it to go without saying?!]
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My intentions are totally innocent. If you think it sounds otherwise, maybe that's a you problem.
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After... after what she'd done her last heat, struggling with how discord made her season so much worse... She'd almost reached out to him. She almost had. But he... he was a Stargazer. It would only have gotten worse. And instead...
She suddenly looks... something else, on top of embarrassed. Guilty? Sad? Something that makes her turn more into her (his) pillow, muttering,]
I am not that perverse.
[... Not now. But what is she going to do be in two weeks?]
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Come on, I was just teasing. What's the matter?
[She looks... upset? But not angry, for a change. He can't think of what might have happened to cause it, when she knows full well by now that he's often not serious, so he reaches to gently touch her shoulder.]
no subject
Men had their pride, did they not? And her own reputation...
Hayame struggles to answer him. Should she warn him now, that she will not be able to meet with him some times? Should she try to prevent him from teasing her about certain things? She does not know. What she does know... is she feels she has made so many errors since she arrived at his home last night. That despite her intent to be... normal, to be... amiable... that she has failed, and he has had to stop and comfort her, or find himself at the mercy of her ire...
Her fingers tighten on his where he had taken hers, before, and instead of providing words... she pulls his hand to her mouth and kisses his knuckles instead. Ring finger, middle, pointer... It buys her time until finally,]
It is nothing.
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You know you can talk to me, right? About anything. I promised I'd be open with you from now on, so I'd like it if it could go both ways.
[He'd like it if she didn't keep secrets too, when there's something clearly on her mind. It's a big ask, of course, for someone who struggles to express herself as Hayame does, but if he can change, he hopes she can, too.]
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And to cover her lack of answer when he gently pushes for one... She goes back to it. She'd neglected his little finger, his thumb... and then she is just pressing his knuckles to her lips, silencing herself, her eye lidded and half-hidden by the dark hood of her lashes.
What can she give him, that is still true but is not... that? It takes her a while, but finally,]
... I have failed at several things I wished to do, coming here.
[Her words whisper warm breath and hints of her lips against his skin. Her cheeks are still ruddy. Her hair is still disheveled from sleep.
And the answer is still honest, even if it wasn't everything.]
no subject
But-- no. He forces himself to focus on what she's saying, his soft expression faltering a little.]
How did you fail?
[He asks it in a soft murmur. Just coming here, spending time with him, not fleeing or denying-- wasn't that enough?]
no subject
… I meant not to bring up anything we would fight about.
[The ambassadors movement, whether or not his intent to come to her world was believable to her…]
I did not mean to make you feel as if you needed comfort me.
[Her brother, Liem Talbott…]
I meant to…
[She bites her lip, and the pink color on her cheeks grows darker, her eye averting, her forelegs curling with a soft click of hoof on hoof. She’d thought… he deserved some sort of proof of her intent, perhaps a reward for… for dealing with her… something that would make up for the month she had left him waiting for word? (And maybe she had wanted to see for herself, if she-) She didn’t know-
And her eye shifts back to look at him, struggling to just say it-]
… Do more.
[Her lips press again to his knuckles, her gaze averting again.]
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[She didn't make him respond that way. He simply cared as a matter of course, and it's better than the alternative of discussing nothing at all. One of his legs moves to settle against a foreleg, as if to offer further comfort, more of his presence.]
Let's just take things a little at a time. You can come back here whenever you want, and I'll be here. [So anything she wants to say, do, express... She can do it when she's ready. This isn't like when he kissed her under the tree, when he thought there had been no time for anything at all, to explain himself. She can take things as slowly as she needs.]
(no subject)