apassingafternoon | hail of arrows

hail of arrows

To graduate from utter silence to the constant roar of Gilead was something else. Though she had been here for over a week now, and would stay for much longer, Kaine was not used to the constant noise. Even at night it felt as if she could hear every shuffle of bodies in sheets and night clothes, every fuck whether positive or not, and all those conversations that were never suited for daylight. It all made sleeping outside difficult, but even lying beside Nariko didn't make it any easier to deal with the walls all around her. They were suffocating. At night and in the day, they threatened to drive Kaine out of her mind.

So she took to wandering around because there wasn't fuck else to do around here, not for her.

Which might have explained catching sight of him towards an edge, around a corner. The specifics weren't relevant, that Kaine saw Bert and spun on her worn down heel and followed him was relevant. It should have also been worrying for her, this unnatural and constant fascination that was tempered by the occasional bout of good sense felt odd. It was a ... Not a problem, but not exactly good. Crushes on men that you hardly knew, that hid the way Cuthbert did, that never let her finish talking the way Cuthbert did couldn't end well.

She followed anyway, and not with any real ounce of subtlety or control. Eventually one of them would have to say something and in her own way she knew he might take that responsibility first. So she followed, and even if Kaine happened to be wrong he was pretty interesting to stare at anyway. Maybe it was the hair.

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"That is delicious," Cuthbert called over, after a minute or two. He'd slowed down, and was starting on the potatoes now, with every sign of enjoyment. Picking up his plate, he got to his feet and sauntered over to her, leaning up against one of the heavy wooden tables to watch her cooking. "You need to teach me how to make these. I mean, I guess there's not much chance I'll be able to, given that I only cook on the trail, but still..."

He wasn't lying, either, although he might have been playing it up a bit. He'd caught that smirk, all right. He might not be Roland, but he was no slouch when it came to observation, either. It would have been lying to say that it didn't make him a little smug in turn, to have that effect. Besides, it was nice to see her happy. He'd got the impression that it didn't happen nearly as often as it should.

Anis, unsurprisingly, didn't seem to agree. With an audible "Hmph!", she went back to kneading the dough for the evening's bread, perhaps rather more violently than was strictly necessary.

"You never know, you might come up with a way to do it on the road, they're good for traveling. I used to take some out with me in the morning when I had to hunt, they lasted all day if they were made right." In some kind of manner this had to be happiness. Maybe it wasn't the right kind because she knew that there was no claim here. Bert wasn't hers. He had quite clearly stated that he wouldn't let it happen but he was still a man and as Nariko never failed to mention - men had needs just as surely as women. So it didn't make any sense for her to act this way. But even if he was playing it up a bit, or even just teasing, she felt appreciated, and even genuinely liked. That much had to be acceptable, right? She didn't want to let go of it just yet.

"Besides, they're easy, you just need bread," Which she held up in a like so motion, "Whatever you want inside," The same action here. "And then you stuff it in evenly. The machine I have works better, but …" She could settle for shoving one pan over the sandwich as it sat in a bigger ban and was slowly heated on one side and then flipped so that it would seal correctly.

Cuthbert watched, chewing on the last couple of mouthfuls of his own panini, and smiled. "Could work on the road, I guess. If bread and cheese were things we actually saw past the first couple days out of Gilead..." He was teasing, really. "But you need to show me the herbs and such. Really. This is amazing. Ah-muuz-ing."

And by is, he presumably meant was, since he'd just polished off the last of his sandwich. Licking his fingers, he put his plate to one side and smiled. "Do you want a cup of wine or something, while we're down here?"

"Seriously?" He was teasing but she wasn't. The only time Kaine had been so far away was when she had first arrived. Cheese and bread were relatively steady in Nariko's previous home, but it hadn't occurred to her that it was different anywhere else. "Well, you can make it with other things, as well." She just used cheese frequently because she really liked cheese! It was a guilty pleasure.

"I guess it can't hurt." Just one. Really and truly nothing more than that. In fact she wanted to tell him to smack her if she accepted more than a cup but then he might not give her any at all. And she was old enough to drink, and make her own decisions about it! Technically.

"Cheese doesn't keep well on the road. Smells too strong, you get rats in your pack if your not careful." Cuthbert looked back over his shoulder, levering himself away from the table to go and fetch a couple of pewter cups from one of the cupboards. "And bread... waybread's alright, but you stay away from home more than a couple days, real bread starts to go stale pretty soon. We live on jerky and whatever we find along the way, mostly."

He ducked into a storeroom, clearly knowing his way around every bit as well as the people who actually worked here, and came out with three cups of wine balanced in his hands. One, he put down in front of Anis with a little half-smile. "Tell Molly I'm sorry for taking her wine, and I'll drop her off another bottle tomorrow, alright? Also, if you'd stop glaring at sai Kaine like you'd like to set her on fire, I'd say thankya."

Blowing her a slightly sardonic kiss, he turned back to Kaine, handing her one of the glasses. "Too mean?"

"That sounds terrible." Jerky was good for emergencies, or if she didn't feel like cooking on a particular day or after a long week. It was not the mainstay for traveling. She shook her head at those ideas, suddenly grateful that she and Nariko had never been more than a day or two away from wherever they need to run off toward. While he flitted around she finished cutting the next set of potatoes and dumped them in the pan.

He reappeared and Kaine did her absolute best to refrain looking upset at the appearance of three cups rather than two. Would it have been rude to ignore Anis? Probably. Did Kaine really care about that when she felt her lightest in years? Of course not. That was the problem with emotions, some were so addicted that wanting more felt inevitable, and that was what had always terrified her.

"I think she'll be fine," And then she took her cup, with a lighter dose of satisfaction, but ti was there all the same.

Cuthbert half-smiled, a little ruefully, and raised his cup to her. "I'm sure," he agreed, taking a sip. "And for your information, it's not terrible. You get used to it pretty quickly. The terrible bit's the blisters and saddle sores when you're on a long sortie. That, and those nights when every time you lie down, new rocks appear to poke you in the back." He pulled a face, just as if he really minded things like that. Honestly, he'd never found that part nearly as difficult as he'd found it coming back to soft mattresses and pillows after a journey. "Although I guess you know that one, from that fairytale quest of yours."

"I ate fresh meat every day for every bright season. What you are talking about is a nightmare imposed upon reality." If there was anything that she happened to be just a tad snotty about then it was food. It was her reward for working hard, and there had always been something gratifying and innate about using her own products, taking care of her own animals, never wasting ... So, no, wandering around and living on jerky might as well have been its own death sentence.

"It wasn't so bad, one particular area aside. There's a lot of grass where come from, and then sand, and the swamp - that was a pain in the ass. Before I moved back into my house I slept outside all the time, in fact, it's kind of why I prefer sleeping outside here." She took a sip first then what could only be deemed a gulp and then, suddenly, half the cup was gone and she forced herself to stop. "Oh this is - Strong! Alright."

Cuthbert laughed, shaking his head. "Am I going to regret giving you that? Because I'm telling you now, I do not volunteer to hold your hair back later on if you can't handle it." Smirking, he took a long draught from his own cup - he drank stronger stuff most of the time; one cupful wasn't going to affect him significantly - and put it to one side. "Sleeping outside here's alright. It's woods that're the worst. Feels like every tree in the vicinity makes it its mission to stick a root in your shoulder."

"Really? That's horrible." She sounded as genuinely upset and moderately upset about that as she felt! Until it occurred to her that he might just be kidding. THen again, he could still be telling the truth. Her utter weakness to alcohol was no laughing matter, so she stared at her cup as if it might bite her back and she mournfully put it to the side for the moment.

"They weren't exactly made to be comfortable," She grinned, sautéing in an almost secondhand kind of manner. "Nothing beats not sleeping alone, though."

She tapped at the handle of the skillet and then forced herself to stop pouting. It was lonely, sure, but she had always been lonely. getting sort of kicked out wasn't supposed to be such a big deal. "

"Mm." He frowned a little. He agreed, but he wasn't about to commit himself to that, not when he'd already decided not to lead her on. This whole situation felt like it had turned very quickly into a minefield - which, in fairness, he should really have expected. It was his own fault for bringing beds and sleeping arrangements into the conversation in the first place.

"I miss the stars sometimes," he said at last, with a lopsided little smile. "When I'm home, I mean. There's a lot that's unpleasant about travelling, but if you've ever been out in the plains or the desert on a night, when the fire's down to embers and the sky looks like it goes on into forever... The sky's bigger out there. Sometimes I end up wandering out on a night and looking up, but it's not the same."

Cuthbert could think whatever his brain willed, Kaine was only thinking about how her life had been forced to change with Roland's very planned marriage. Bad he took her friend but now he got her bed, too? And he wasn't ever in it to begin with! It was horrible. But if she saw the change in topic for what it was, then it wasn't clear.

"You would probably love where I come from, then! We have two suns, a gigantic moon, and stars all over the place. In fact, I'm pretty sure we have more." It wasn't any matter of pride, she really happened to believe it. "In the low season, the shade lights come out, and they're kind of like ... A night rainbow. It's really beautiful."

And even though the images brought a smile to her face Kaine still didn't really miss the place, she only wished she could show it to Cuthbert. For pure, friend related reasons. But it was that thought that allowed her to take another drink as she finished her meal and plated it simply. "Granted, it's also pretty difficult to sleep through if you're sensitive to that kind of thing." And speaking of sensitive - It was no surprise that she colored easily, at even the slightest matters, in fact. A part of that was genetics, and her slightly pale skin, so there was no hiding the presence of it crawling up her neck and towards her ears. And that was just from one full drink!

"It sounds... strange," he confessed with a little laugh, following her lead and taking a mouthful of his own wine. "Wonderful. But bedamned strange, say true. Two suns? Shade lights? I can't even start to imagine it." He said that with another, rather self-deprecating, laugh, and pulled a face. "It must have been very odd, coming here to one sun and a little sliver of moon, if you say true."

And, frankly, not an experience he envied. Leave the wanderlust to Roland; Cuthbert would follow him where he was led, but he wasn't the one who longed for strange lands and different skies. Truth be told, he was tied too strongly to home for him to want to journey for its own sake. But, looking at the expression on her face, he thought maybe it might be worth it, in that case.

She cut her sandwich into two pieces, offering him one half while she bit into the other, listening, and then considering how to respond.

"It was terrifying." Not just odd, not even intimidating or concerning. It was absolutely terrifying and in very many ways that had yet to change. She couldn't seem to get a handle on how people spoke which was quite aggravating given how many books she had read and despite all the times she had daydreamed about going somewhere new and far away. "In fact, I was the one that nearly had a breakdown over the whole thing. To hear a story is one thing, to live even half of what has gone on?" She shook her head, "I think it almost drove me insane."

This was one of the very few matters that remained known but unspoken between herself and Nariko, who had accepted it all quite simply and with only the brief appearance of nightmares and sleeplessness. "I thought I would be so much happier if I was anywhere that people didn't know me, even if I could still see their fates."

He turned down the proffered food, shaking his head, and listened with a little frown. It wasn't an easy thing to hear, or to understand. Cuthbert was a man who cared very strongly for people, and always had; he thrived on company and attention. So, while he could see on one level why she would want isolation from people who knew her, on another, it was quite simply unthinkable. It wasn't a concept that fitted into his worldview, and that made it incredibly hard to know how to respond.

The almost being driven insane, though... that he could understand. He'd experienced it himself, in Hambry and since, that feeling that everything was out of place and couldn't possibly be real. How much worse to have that feeling in an entirely different world?

He took a long drink of wine when she'd finished talking, draining his glass. "...Can you?" he asked, after a moment. "Still see their fates?"

Since he didn't want anymore Kaine could chomp away! She was a tad more polite about it than Cuthbert had been but there was no mistaking how hungry she was. But it was a good thing her mouth was full as he asked that question. Kaine blinked at him, wide-eyed as if she couldn't understand why he would even think to ask her that.

"No," She answered him after swallowing her mouthful behind gently crooked fingers. "I could probably see Claude', but that only makes sense." So if he was concerned that she might see how long he had to live then there was no need for it, her vision was perfectly normal. "It only seems to work with people from my home. Even when Nariko showed up I couldn't see anything around her, either."

"That sounds like a blessing." Cuthbert sounded completely serious, for the time being, and the little smile he gave her wasn't one of humour. "I've seen what knowing the future does to people, and I want none of it. I'd struggle enough with what Al has. I can't imagine how hard it must have been for you."

Edited (forgot to icons) 2015-02-22 01:25 (UTC)

"It was easy. It just meant never getting too close to anyone." It meant that she knew when her own grandmother's time was up, and the value of keeping a distance between herself and other people. Before it had meant nothing but pain and suffering anyway, even if she had made friends, developed crushes, they might have turned into Spectres, might have died abruptly. She needed people as much as anyone else, she just hadn't been granted the luxury of it, hadn't been allowed to fit people into her world view the way Cuthbert had.

"Can I have some more?" Wine, and she tipped her cup in hand to make her request clear. "And is it alright if I ask what it is, exactly, that Alain can do?" Of course it was a something. Nariko had felt it the moment she saw him and Kaine understood why. He wasn't Wrong or even unsettling, there was just a ... Something about him.

"Sure." He considered for a moment, then turned to vanish back into the storeroom, coming back with bottle in hand to pour them each another cup. That little diversion also gave him the chance to consider how he was going to explain.

"It's called the Touch," he said, when he was done. "A kind of magic, you could say. I have it a little, too, but with me it's more of... a sense, I guess? Of people, of their feelings and their needs and their wants. A lot of people have it the way I do. Roland," he added, a little wryly, "has absolutely nothing. Which might be why he's quite such an ass. But Alain's something else." He took a mouthful of his wine, leaning up against the table. "He's not a wizard or anything. Which, given the wizards we've known, is something of a relief. But what some of us feel a little, he feels all the time. He can reach out with it, too, direct it, sometimes even hear what people are thinking. He says it comes in flashes. I say if my mind did that, I'd only let it happen in flashes, too."

He pulled a face, looking down into his wine. "There's a lot of stories about it, and I don't really get it. But I guess he's just more attuned to things than the rest of us. Useful for the rest of us, but I can't imagine it's much fun for him."

The instant her cup was filled she drank. It always felt as if the stuff injected itself right into her blood stream for how warm it made her. The creeping blush that had lingered around her neck and ears now eased to her cheeks and her nose, in part because she was back to taking deep gulps. It was unfair for something so delicious to rob her of her good senses!

"It doesn't seem like it would be, and he seems very nice despite it. Lesser men would probably be basket cases." She paused just to think on it. Feeling all the time, feeling other people all the time. Kaine could barely stand to feel herself most of the time.

"I don't think he's nice despite it. I think he's nice because of it." Cuthbert shrugged, but he was smiling rather fondly. "Although it's amazing that he's managed to be the only one of us who isn't entirely mad." That wasn't even him being self-deprecating, exactly. Even if he might be exaggerating a little, there was no denying that Alain was the only one of their ka-tet to be really grounded, or to have any kind of emotional stability. Bert hid everything he felt behind jokes and sharpness, Jamie was angry all the time, and Roland... well, the less said about Roland's emotional state, the better. With that in mind, Bert had always had to admire Alain's quiet connectedness, even if he also mocked him mercilessly for the emotional openness that came with it.

Of course that would only make it even more impressive, but she didn't say a word about that, she continued to drink and found herself wondering about Cuthbert's hair again. And his face. And his shoulders. Basically, just all of him. It was fine if she was only thinking, right? Not hurting anyone by saying something out of turn. Right? Right. Completely.

"It must be nice to know each other like that, right?" She popped one of the potatoes in her mouth and damn near missed, but didn't appear to notice. "Sure, I have stories about weird animals and keys and lady crushes, but you? You always have people to come back to! And an interestingly named horse."

Because that mattered, too!

"Just one in a string of Glue Boys and Glue Girls, I'm afraid." He smiled crookedly, and added wryly, "Doesn't do to let them forget where they're headed." Then, a little more seriously, "I've never not known them. Ro' and I were raised in the same cradle half the time, and we've been close with Alain since we could toddle. We were all but born an-tet. We played together, we studied together, we've fought together so many times it's like..."

He pulled a face, aware that he might be coming across as a little smug, and took another draught of wine. "Do you know what 'ka-tet' means? One from many. I don't know how much I believe in ka and destiny and all that crap, that's Roland's department. But we're one, all right. That's why I couldn't help hating Susan a little. She took a big part of him. Of us." He looked down at his wine, suddenly morose. "And now Nariko gets the rest."

Well that was depressing ... But if there was some connection between the names and where horses supposedly went then Kaine didn't understand it and she was far too pleasantly buzzed to care. It sounded nice, being that close and interconnected with someone but she couldn't pretend to fully take in the entire meaning, not when she had spent so much of her life alone. And it was ironic that he brought up Nariko just as she thought that!

Snorting gently, Kaine shook her head. "This is why I don't get - why you're so worried about it? Men sort of terrify me but Roland's not really that bad but he's not, ahh," She waved both hands, trying to make some kind of gesture that might explain her thoughts. "You're all like this," She put both hands together in an empty circle as if that would clearly explain ka/an-tet, "But then she's over here, this way," One hand freed itself from a ring to becoming her two first fingers, greatly separated from her other hand. "Roland will always be this," ka/an-tet, "While Nariko will always be this." She waved her fingers around a little but they didn't go near the other hand until both dropped in a full shrug.

"One from many doesn't sound like something that can ever be fractured or even taken away from. Maybe something changes, but that's not the same as losing. Everyone changes. But people like Nariko and I don't get to be ka-anything. She's said as much multiple times, especially in the context of you and Roland. I can't say I don't agree with her."

"That's not really how it... Hold up. Let me just put on my Vannay face." He cleared his throat and proceeded to do just that, putting on an expression of exaggerated seriousness and stroking an imaginary beard. His voice rose a little in pitch, becoming cracked and wavering. Although she had no way of knowing it, his impression of his old teacher was remarkably good, having been perfected over many years. "Ka picks us all up along the way, and carries us along, for we are all one in its path. Enemies and friends, brothers and sons, all those along your path are part of your ka. Ka binds us together, and only ka separates us. And so on and so forth," he added, with a laugh, dropping both the voice and the rest of the impression. "Point is, you and Nariko are an-tet. You just don't know it. And she's a part of his ka, now, for good or ill. And so of mine, I guess, and Alain's and Jamie's too. It's not as simple as you make it out to be."

that is the best closing sentence to a tag i have seen in a long time :p

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yes sure let's give the half-virgin wine around her crush. A+ idea (I approve)

i am going to continue torturing her with circumstances YOU CAN'T STOP ME

I cannot and it is great

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