Scene Archives

leans against one of the table in the library game room, casually throwing darts. She hits the bullseye more often than not, so she’s taken to trying to arrange them in pleasing patterns. She’s waiting, isn’t sure how long she’s going to have to wait. She has a glass of something in her free hand, and she takes small sips now and then.

: “You think that like I haven’t been here this entire time.” And he has been. Sitting deep within the shadows of the corner couch. He leans forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin on the back of his hands as he says this.

: “Just because you’ve present doesn’t mean you’re here,” she throws another dart, nestling it next to the other in the bullseye. She doesn’t turn to look at him. “That’s kind of the whole thing you’re doing, isn’t it?”

: “Anyway, what did you even want?”

sets her glass down on the table along with her spare darts and goes over to sit next to him, but not too close, on the couch. “I don’t know. ‘ What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? / I never know what you are thinking. Think’,” she quotes.

: “I think your language processor broke.”

: “It’s just more poetry from the void,” she says, and then, “You saw the conversations I had with Wolf, I presume.”

: “What, just now?” He glances up and to the side, the back down. “Yeah.”

: “When I decided to talk to him, I had intended to show him. Not what you said to me, but all those times your words helped me find my footing in the storm. But by the time morning rolled around, we’d had a few exchanges and—“ she looks longingly at the drinks and darts she left on the table. “I was thinking you’d grown bored of me. And it was hard to want to make that kind of argument for your sake when I felt like that.”

flicks his hand and produces a dart, before casually lobbing it towards the board without much in the way of form. Rather than traveling at a normal speed, it lazily ambles through the air as if being slowly pulled towards the board rather than having been thrown.

: “No real reason you need to defend me to him.”

: “Also no more so than at any other point in time.”

watches the path of the dart so she doesn’t have to look at him. “Why do you act like you don’t care? I know it’s easier, but you’ve never struck me as someone who takes the easy path. And maybe you don’t care, not really, about what Wolf thinks, or if I’m your friend, but I just don’t get it.”

: “Why do you care if the ghost of an alien haunting your boyfriend is a grumpy hermit or not?” Jorule shrugs and then leans back. “I don’t know, what do you want me to say that I haven’t already said? I’m not directly involved and am kinda just along for the ride. Willing to help when it’s needed, but shouldn’t be in the top five solution attempt ideas. I’m not particularly attached to any of you at this point either, other than you.”

: “What do you want me to say that I haven’t already said? I care because it doesn’t have to be like this; you don’t have to be the ghost of an alien haunting my boyfriend? Because when you’re engaged and excited you’re vibrant and interesting and fun to be around?” She gets up and gets her drink, then goes over to peer at the bar. “Do you want anything while I’m up?”

: “I mean, no, not really, I’m not actually big on unnecessary food consumption, but I also feel like you’re going to get upset if I say no, so, I don’t know grab one of those lemonades and shove a few cherries in it.”

: “You ever get tired of feeling like you need to be everyone’s best friend, though? ‘Cause it honestly sounds exhausting as hell.”

: “I don’t actually feel like I need to be everyone’s best friend.” She considers not getting him a lemonade, because she wouldn’t have actually gotten upset if he said no, but he did ask so … cherry lemonade it is. She pours it into a glass, adds some ice and then some of the cherries and brings it over to him and then takes a sip of her own whiskey. “Friends just keep on happening to me. The fact that I keep choosing you is—you know, I was going to say ‘my own bad taste’ but instead of being self-deprecating, maybe we could sit with that for a moment.”

: “Maybe you offer something that my other companions don’t. Maybe it’s even valuable.”

stares at Salme for a few seconds as he takes a drink.

: “You really think that? ‘friends just keep on happening to me’?”

: “That’s the line you’re honing in on?”

: “Yeah, ‘cause it’s the most insane thing you said there.”

: “You put in tons of hours and effort into developing those, they aren’t just happening to you.”

shrugs, a little awkwardly. “I mean. I guess? It doesn’t feel like effort, really, for the most part?”

: “I mean, compare and contrast with everyone else in your group… but sure.”

: “Anyway what I bring to the table for you is that I realize you are a big girl who is capable of taking care of herself when she’s not being a fucking idiot, vs the rest of them treating you like you’re fragile and delicate. Which is ironic, because that’s also how you treat most of them, too.”

presses her lips together. “Yeah. That’s. I remember the first time you said … hm. ‘Anyone else you know will handle you with kid gloves because it’s actually you that is the delicate fragile flower.’ That line kind of lives with me. It makes me wonder what you’re seeing that I’m not. Like others are just kind to me because they don’t expect me to be tough enough to take the truth.”

: “Oh I was probably just giving you shit about having another crisis of personality, or something? I guess I am kind of an asshole.”

looks at him and her mouth thins into a line. She picks up a dart (she grabbed them from the table and the dartboards) and tosses one, almost carelessly, as the board. It lands just within the bullseye. “Remember what I told you about the things you say sometimes having an unintended effect on the person you say them too?”

: “I mean I really, do not remember the rest of the context around that line, it was forever ago. And that’s probably the thing we talk about the most at this point, so.”

: “Unfortunately, I still do remember things and this still do matter to me.” She turns the glass in her hands. “What do you mean, precisely, about us treating each other like we’re fragile and delicate?”

: “You all have hero complexes. You all have to shoulder every burden, because no one else could or should. No one should experience any suffering, other than you.”

snorts. “Okay. Well that’s fair enough. We’re working on it, I think. I hope. At least I am.” She finishes her drink, and then gestures for Jorule’s lemonade. “Let me try?”

hands over the half full glass. It is of course, Beast-style Lemonade and not Mu-style Lemon-aid. Sparkling and refreshing, rather than sweet and sour.

takes a sip, blinks at the fizz, and then takes another sip. “That’s pretty good,” she says, before handing it back. “As for the other thing … it’s a trust issue, right? It’s something we need to work out because if we don’t it’s going to be a problem, I think, down the road. Hopefully later rather than sooner, but.” She shrugs.

: “Not necessarily a trust issue, though it could be, depending. Just. Well. You’re all used to being the Tough Loner Protector and are kinda ass at working with groups. Well. Maybe not Archie or Awa, but y’know.”

actually does laugh then, for real, bright and loud. “Well. Not unfair. I really am trying. All those cultivated friendships you mentioned—I mean, some of them are just because I like people, but a lot of them are … I’m good. With people. Generally speaking, present company excluded of course. It seems like a thing I can do, to build these networks and connections. The library, of course, is to support us all, not just for myself.” She shrugs. “You’re right though. Maybe that’s the one benefit you had in herding a bunch of teenagers. People less set in their ways?”

: “Maybe? I mean, honestly all we wanted to do was just explore cool places, so that helped a lot too.”

nods and throws another dart, not even to bother where it lands. “Though I guess if I need another Jorule leadership seminar, I can do that over tomestone. Instead I wanted to …” She sighs. “What are you trying to do when you reply publicly? You said you’re not particularly attached to us but I think … I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think you particularly enjoy being disliked by us either. Isn’t that part of why you reacted so badly when we first met?”

: “Not trying to do anything in particular other than stave off boredom and/or answer questions.”

: “You know, I wanted to talk in person because I was hoping you’d be less inclined to do the thing where you only answer one of the two questions I ask.”

: “That is ABSOLUTELY not how spoken conversations work in any practical sense, Defender of Oral Tradition.”

gives a brief, bright laugh, and then says, “Okay, fine, I’ll repeat myself. You don’t actually enjoy people hating your guts, do you? Why do you let it happen?”

: “It was not intentional! I feel like that was very clear from the follow up responses.”

: “Sure, but you’ve admitted that the abrasiveness is at least partly a choice and I’ve seen your early DMs with Shijin. Even if that wasn’t intentional, the entire way you present yourself is.”

: “Nothing about that conversation with Shijin was me acting naturally, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

looks at him. “Jorule, I am not assuming what is ‘natural’ for you, because I’ve seen you be very different people in very different contexts. Including, in retrospect, your attempt at being whoever you thought Annarr was very early on.” She puts down the dart she was about to throw. “We’ve talked about this, about how we change who we are in different times and different places. I’m asking why you chose to be abrasive as hell to keep people at a distance? Why that strategy?”

: “Because if I was nice and friendly and overbearingly around, most of the rest of your group would quietly fade into the background and let me take the lead in things they could be doing instead. And while they might not particularly mind too much in the moment, the longer it goes on the more they’d start finding it annoying and resentful. It’s your story, you’re the leads, you should be the ones taking charge. ‘Slightly unfriendly fey creature that has our backs when the chips are down’ just adds a little spice to that, and is easy enough to keep in the back ground that no one would fixate on it.” A pause to finish the rest of his drink. “Well, almost no one.”

: “Hmm. Do you really think they’d be content to let you lead? After you said all of us were so … salamander-y?”

: “If I had presented myself differently? Absolutely.”

: “I think … you’re probably more experienced in this, and I’ll defer to your judgement there. I just. It sucks, you know.” She weighs a dart in her hand, but doesn’t throw it. “I try not to kid myself. I know a good portion of what initially drew me to Aurelius was you. I love who he’s becoming. I support and celebrate that. But I don’t kid myself. The parts of him that were you? That have fallen away as he’s become more himself?” She does throw the dart then, “I want those parts in my life too. I want you in my life. And part of it is because I can trust you to give me a perspective no one else has, but part of it is simply because I enjoy your company, even at its most abrasive.”

: “I’m not going anywhere any time soon.”

: “I didn’t think you were. That’s not why it sucks.” She huffs, exasperated. “Is it so strange to want to see someone you care about happy? And not haunting the story like a ghost that’s trying not to matter as little as possible because he doesn’t want to cause harm? I’m not saying you’re wrong to do what you’re doing. I’m not saying you should change. It just sucks, because you deserve more.”

: “It’s a little strange that you’re incapable of taking anyone at their word when they say they’re perfectly fine, or happy in a low key way, or content with how things are. Though. I guess. You did spend a lot of years saying those things without them strictly being true so.”

: “I’ll admit I keep fucking up with Aury because—I admit I keep fucking up with Aury. But I don’t think, considering the fact that you’ve admitted you’re bored, and you’ve referred to yourself as a ghost, and you talk about yourself like you’re a particularly useful knife but one prone to cutting others, it’s unreasonable for me to question it coming from you.”

: “I guess that’s fair but it’s still entertaining enough when other people are doing things that don’t involve me.”

: “You and silmät bonding over bearing witness, huh?”

: “Something like that yeah.”

nods and seems satisfied with that, more or less. “I think you may want to be careful, at the very least, about … I know you’ll have our back when the chips are down, and I’m not sure … how much Awa can access Eight-Six’s other lives, but I bet he knows that too. But Wolf did seem to be fairly convinced you might have malicious intent. That’s probably something to watch.”

gives an exaggurated sigh. “I… apologized…! Even with those very words…! Not that either of you remembered that, but.”

: “Not my fault he has a fuck up relationship with the strange and weird instead of a normal ass one though, I really don’t think I should be held accountable for that.”

looks at him and she is not very impressed. “Words and the way words are said matter to Wolf. You can feel whatever way you want about that and you’ll note that I was not actually rendering an opinion on who was in the right or in the wrong there. I was simply making a statement about actions and consequences.”

: “They were said without malicious intent.”

: “And I’m telling you that you’re being and obtuse turd on purpose, but without malicious intent.”

: “I really, truly, was not. At the time.”

: “Oh yeah. I meant you were being an obtuse turd now. But I mean that’s the thing, right? I wasn’t bothered by what you said because I know you. But as you’ve pointed out, you’ve made yourself pretty hard to know on purpose. Words matter to Wolf, and if you say them thoughtlessly, he’s not going to have almost 1,000 ripples in DMs to go ‘actually, Jorule just talks like that.’ He’s going to go with the most obvious reading.” She shrugs. “I … really think you two just have divergent values, maybe in ways that are irreconcilable.”

: “S’what I said before, yeah.”

: “Does that … bug you?”

: “Not particularly, some people just don’t jell well and that’s fine. It’s not like he has to put up with my presence very much and I don’t have to deal with whatever that would cause to happen.”

nods. “Yeah there’s not very many versions of this story where I can imagine that happening that anyone’d enjoy”

: “Though. You know. I do wish sometimes you’d see a little more value in Almachadta. We did figure out record-keeping throughout the cycles when no one else did.”

rolls his eyes with enough force that you can tell he’s doing it behind the sunglasses in the dim light of the game room. “It’s also the only one we know for sure that IS operating on a cycle system. But also my disliking your lush, comfortable food of plenty world doesn’t mean I don’t see any value to it.”

: “Could’ve fooled me,” she mutters.

: “I prefer buildings and cities to tree and birds, sue me.”

: “We do actually have buildings! We also have trees and birds! Both! The ideal is—“ she makes a frustrated sound. “Sometimes I really hate how you make me want to apologize for where I’m from.”

: “Absolutely don’t? That’s a me problem not an Almachadta problem, and even less so a Salme one.”

: “Oh.” She kicks at the floor, a little petulant. “That’s … okay.”

slants a glance at him. “You know. Since you’re here and I’m here … you could let me braid your hair.”

: “Why are you so fixated on this? Do you not have enough hair of your own?”

: “It’s purple? And longer than mine? And was really soft the one time I touched it?”

sighs. “If you must.”

can’t help the tiny, pleased chirp of complete and utter triumph as she scootches closer. “I was thinking of doing a four-strand braid with some smaller braids to match the three you already have? I know you can just shrug and return it to normal as soon as I’m done, but—“