IC Inbox | noctiumrp

[voidgates]

« theartistalphinaudandhisass »

TEXT ✧ AUDIO ✧ VIDEO ✧ ACTION

SUMMER ICARIAN ✦ FINAL FANTASY XIV (WoL OC)
RESIDENCE ✦ Residency
GEMBOND ✦ Ruby

"...ltros, what are you doing with that, put that down right now you little —"

INFO ✧ PERMISSIONS ✧ KINKLIST ✧ EXTRA

Comments

[voidgates]

Well, that's why. You don't have the look of someone who spends a great deal of time in Ul'dah.

[Clicking her tongue, she bends and retrieves the misbehaving mechanical menace, holding it against her chest the way one might hold a stuffed animal, clasped in loosely crisscrossed arms.

...Ultros, the little lech, seems content with that state of affairs, and wriggles approvingly.]

This is Ultros. He's a horrible little thing.

[She says, with adoration.]

[basura_boi]

There're thaumaturges in the Maelstrom. All sorts in the Maelstrom.

[ Himself as exhibit number one, really. A Keeper of the Moon who is a dragoon and nearly as far as he can get from both Gridania and Ishgard. He crosses his arms, ears going mulish. ]

And I been to Ul'dah. Plenty of times. It's too bloody hot. And bright.

[ As had been Ala Mhigo, for that matter, but... he doesn't want to think about that.

He regards the mammet with the same level of disturbed suspicion that he might a large, hairy insect that Summer was holding against her boobs. ]

Yeah, looks pretty horrible.

[voidgates]

Pirates in the Maelstrom.

[That's really just proving his point, but regardless. She hangs on to Ultros a little longer, letting him be properly examined and inspected, and then gently deposits him onto the ground again as she starts leading the way to the stairs and down off the roof.]

You've never had a mammet? A lot of people do. Or mayhap that's just something they do in Ul'dah...rich people have all sorts of funny ideas that way.

[basura_boi]

[ He shrugs, as if to say, and what of it? His respect for things like governments is... not high. If he was going to end up serving anywhere, the pirate city state certainly made the most sense. Still, his lip curls in a slight smirk. ]

'til the sea swallows all.

[ He shakes his head. Admitting this is probably a major mistake on his part, but he doesn't generally like lying if he doesn't have a reason to lie, because the more lies one tells, the harder it is to remember them all, and he's not that smart. ]

Don't really like 'em. [ He hesitates, trying to figure out how to describe why, and finally settles on: ] They move around but ain't got souls. 's weird. And rich folk are real weird too, so that makes sense, aye?

Why d'ya have one? [ Squint. ] You don't act rich.

[voidgates]

Not souls, no, but they have something. The goldsmith's guild has one that's assisted the guildmasters for ages.

[Up close, it quickly becomes apparent that Ultros makes faint squishing noises when he walks. It is either adorable or profoundly annoying, depending on one's point of view.

Summer's voice, meanwhile, takes on the slightest hint of a rebellious edge.]

This one, someone made and then decided it was a mistake. They were going to dismantle him, so I took him instead, and now he's mine.

[basura_boi]

[ Ezar is definitely not of the opinion that it's adorable. He keeps an eye on the mammet like he's half expecting it's going to attack him. At her tone, his ears flick and he gives her a considering look. ]

Don't think you want to hear my feelings on your toy. It's yours and it brings you happiness so it ain't my business.

But I'd rather you keep it away from me, aye?

[voidgates]

I admitted he's horrible, didn't I? Just don't kick him, I don't know if I could repair him on my own if something happened to him.

[She shrugs a little, continuing to lead the way. Ultros, never one to take direction when he could be committing crimes instead, divides his time neatly between following Summer and wandering over close to Ezar, almost as though he's doing it deliberately.]

What toys do you favor, then? If not mammets.

[basura_boi]

I'll try not to. But if it touches me, I make no promises.

[ He's watching you, Ultros. ]

...toys? [ He looks genuinely baffled. ] Why would I...?

[ I'm not a child. But obviously, she's not either. So she apparently comes from a very different... social setting where that's a normal thing for adults to do. ]

[voidgates]

You must've had them once. Or something you collect? Something pointless you favor even though it's pointless?

[SURELY YOU MUST HAVE FUN EZAR. SURELY.]

Nothing like that?

[basura_boi]

You mean stuff I do for fun?

[ Thal's balls, why not just ask the question in a normal way? ]

Played with toys when I was too young to hunt. [ He shrugs. ] Then I was... [ He hesitates; this is getting too close to things he doesn't talk about. ] ...I was one of our hunters.

I still hunt, when I've leave. Fish, too. Read, sometimes, but I'm not much good at it. [ All things, notably, that he can do by himself. ] I grow orchids. Grew orchids, I guess.

You do anything other than play with toys?

[voidgates]

I was supposed to be a huntress, but I was never much at it. No good with lances or bows. I like listening to stories, though, and telling them. Maybe I could've been a fair bard, but for the bit about the arrows.

[She's quiet for an interval, thinking it over.]

Do you ever think about how big the star really is? How much that's really out there, farther than the eye could ever see. All the lasting remnants of everything that ever came before. I like finding out about places like that.

[basura_boi]

[ He does not find it in the least surprising that Summer likes stories. She certainly talks more than enough to be a bard. Nor does it surprise him that she wasn't much for hunting. A person can train a certain amount of coordination into their body if they don't come by it naturally, but he'd wager she wasn't overly inclined to try.

These are both opinions he keeps to himself. ]

Sailing with the Crimson Fleet, I've seen the ocean. Water stretching so far that it's all you see in any direction, and from the top of the mast you can see the star curve away beneath you.

[ He looks forward, reminded of other, older things, the way she says lasting remnants. A dangerous topic to admit to any knowledge of; this is why it's best perhaps to avoid others from Eorzea. He's not that good of a liar. ]

A single malm of the forest is a world unto itself. What dwells there is older than anyone's imaginings, and it carries more secrets than anyone'd be able to learn in their life.

What is it you're lookin' for?

[voidgates]

[If the measure of a good bard is the ability to keep an audience engaged, Summer thinks idly, then mayhap she really could've been a good one — at least as far as Ezar is concerned. She wonders if he's noticed that not only is he at a point of volunteering information on his own, he's asking questions without being prompted or baited into them.

Hopefully he hasn't noticed. She's certainly not going to tell him.]

You mean what secrets? It sounds funny, but...I'm not usually the one who knows what we're looking for. I just listen to the people who do. My friends, usually.

[Which. Feels odd to admit, somehow? It's not as though it's any new revelation. It's just a little new to put into words and say aloud.]

Or were you expecting me to say something like, "I'm looking for who I really am"?

[basura_boi]

[ There is an overly long pause as Ezar tries to make sense of that, and further tries to figure out if there's a way to repeat his question, in a more specific way, without it becoming obvious what information he's fishing for. Because Summer's not dumb, she'd sniff it out, he's certain of that, and if he admits to anything at all, she'll just hypnotize him or whatever it is she does and then he'll say even more he shouldn't.

What he really wants to know is if he should turn around and run now, because he might have been terribly wrong to think she as safe to be around as anyone from Eorzea potentially could be. There is no good way of asking that.

A little of his consternation shows by a shift in the angle of his ears, back just a few degrees more. Worried. He isn't sure how to divert away from that, either. This is just one more reason he doesn't talk to people, as a rule. ]

Aye, isn't that why most people go poking about where they shouldn't?

[ A suitably grouchy answer, he hopes. ]

They're either huntin' for treasure or huntin' to fill some other emptiness.

[voidgates]

Or hunting the things that like to stake out a domain in secret places, because most people are smart enough not to go poking about where they shouldn't.

[A single malm of the forest is a world unto itself, he says. She's never much felt at home in forests, preferring the savannas and deserts that more closely resembled home, but thinking of thickets and green canopies and the horrible many-eyed things that live in them has her thoughts spinning back to the Qitana Ravel, and the Vii who took up the cause of protecting it, and the Lightwarden that found all those circumstances perfectly suitable for a permanent home.]

Everything feels like a secret when you're not much of a scholar, I suppose. Even small things.

[She pauses, and then before she can think better of it, she adds one last thing.]

Maybe it's a little like being at the top of the mast on the ocean. It's the sort of place where you're supposed to feel lonely. You sort of...feel lonely along with it, instead of feeling lonely on your own.

[basura_boi]

I'd want to think many of those places got their own protectors. [ His lips twist bitterly. ] But I wager a good many of 'em been killed or driven out.

[ When you're not much of a scholar. Well, he can hardly argue with that, since he isn't and never has been. But it grates at him somehow, all the same. ]

Mayhap bein' much of a scholar means a person gives secrets less respect than they're owed.

[ It's dumb to even say these things. He should just be smiling and nodding. Why isn't he? ]

Mmm. Can see how you could feel that way. [ He tucks his hands in his pockets, shoulders rising in a shrug. ] Climbing the mast never made me feel lonesome, though, nor bein' out in the Shroud on my own. Just makes me feel... small. And that ain't the same.

[voidgates]

Not just protectors. Invaders, too. Parasites.

[His remark in rejoinder to the topic of scholars has an odd effect, though — it actually gets her to laugh, bright and more than a little unintentional. Because what an apt description of people like Y'shtola and Urianger and G'raha: unwilling to leave any stone unturned, always poking and prodding and forming theories at every turn, determined to shine light into every nook and cranny of shadow.]

...You're right, though. Small still belongs — you to it, and it to you. That's different than standing in a place that isn't yours.

[basura_boi]

[ He certainly can't disagree with her mention of invaders or parasites. All manner of things find their way into hidden places. But further commentary on that would be too revealing, probably. It's hard to know when to stop talking... probably why it's better to not start. ]

Small just means you're part of something bigger. Better'n being cut off.

But the only places I ever been like that [ "a place that isn't yours" ] were made by the fuckin' Garleans.

[ So she probably means something even more different from that. ]

[voidgates]

Did you feel like you belonged in the Maelstrom?

[That could so easily sound like it's a rhetorical question, challenging or sarcastic, but it...isn't. It's wholly genuine, and in a way almost tentative, as though Summer genuinely doesn't know either way which way his answer will go.]

Or with the dragoons? Or...whoever you served with. Your companies.

[basura_boi]

[ Another long silence as he contemplates how to answer that, and what the true answer would even be. ]

Think it depends on what you mean by that.

[ It isn't even an attempt to be evasive; it's a question of what that kind of feeling is like. Which may be its own answer, that he can't immediately classify a place being somewhere he's belonged. ]

[voidgates]

Mm...

[This is just a conversation of lengthy pauses by now, isn't it.]

I think. It's like the difference between "my arm" and "my boots". They're both yours, but one is a part of you and one is separate. So.

[She shrugs a little.]

"My Maelstrom". More like your arm, or more like your boots?

[basura_boi]

[ It's certainly a clarifying answer. And that makes his own answers plain, though he wonders what they say about him. The only thing he can think of that might rise to that standard of 'my arm' was his clan and their place in the Shroud... but even then, was that true? He'd left them, run away. Could he have even attempted that, if he had truly belonged?

He doesn't know. It's certainly not something he can talk over with Summer. He can, at least, answer that one specific question. ]

Boots, more like.

[ He shrugs. ]

Pay's good, and they take care of their sailors. But it's a job like any other.

[voidgates]

Mine, too. My Flames. My Ul'dah. My thaumaturges. Boots.

[She pauses. They're being honest, after all, and all things considered it can't really hurt.]

My friends were boots, for a long time.

[basura_boi]

Implies they aren't that any more, aye?

[ In which case.. another thing for which he can be glad, for her. It is not something he has, nor thinks himself ever likely to have, though there is part of him that might wish it. ]

[voidgates]

I don't really know when it changed. I just know that it did. It snuck up on me.

[A quiet hum.]

But it's a little overwhelming, to live in a world of boots and suddenly find an arm.