hail of arrows

[apassingafternoon]

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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[apassingafternoon]

Despite her lack of experience even she couldn't help thinking that a little battle might have been won there. Not the entire war, far from that, but it was something. And occasionally all anyone needed was a little something to help them get ready for everything. But apparently her own rules didn't exactly apply because while it was very obviously a chaste kiss, just as her hug had been without ulterior motive or thought, she still blushed and looked off to another side.

"You're welcome." At least they could agree that it was her turn, and she tried to think of something to tell him but nothing really stood out for her. "... My life has been really boring."

Horrifyingly so. "There was that one time I caught a drunkard who dressed himself up in a weird outfit and constantly made speeches?"

[askthelookout]

"Many different kinds of heroes, indeed," Cuthbert said with mock-sincerity, and laughed. "I don't believe for a moment that your life's been that dull. Not travelling with Nariko, anyroad, not from what I've seen of her." Shifting his weight, so he was kneeling rather than sitting, he regarded her thoughtfully for a moment.

At last, he looked up at the sky. It was coming on to evening; they'd been outside longer than he'd realised. Not that he was complaining. For all their to-and-fro, and for all that revisited pain, this was the most peaceful afternoon he'd had in ages.

"Tell me about where you're from," he said suddenly, after a minute or so. "I don't even know where that is, but I'm guessing from how you talk it's nowhere I've been. So. Start there?"

[apassingafternoon]

"Not a bad point, I guess. But I'm really not kidding, everything before her was just ..." She shrugged, "The way it happened to be. I don't know if she already told you but I'm really not from around here." But just in case it wasn't clear enough: "Your entire world isn't mine. In-World or Mid-World or whatever World, it's not mine. I ended up here by accident and Nariko's helped me not die. She was also the very first friend that I made."

She unfolded her legs and laid them straight, grinning. "Sixteen years and no friends. How sad is that?" Her shoulders lifted and fell back down. "It was always just grandma and I, y'know? People don't take kindly to a kid that can tell whose going to die or turn into crazy, terrifying ghosts that kill people. We lived in the house my great-grandpa built, where my parents lived until they were killed, it's actually not that bad a place, nice land, kind off of in a corner, it's just far away from everything else."

Her eyes closed and for the first time in weeks she appeared to well and truly relax. "We don't really have roads or big civilizations, but we have plumbing and that's pretty damn great! Also, hot water whenever we want within reason. My grandma sold jewelry - people weren't as scared of her as they were me - and I took orders for furniture. I guess that makes me a carpenter. Everything is quiet, people keep to themselves for the most part. Everyone began to open up a little when Nariko came around, I guess it helped them realize that I didn't really enjoy what I could see. If I ever go back maybe it won't be so bad."

But that was if she ever went back at all. "Oh, we have these things called paninis - they're like flat, ah, I think you call them popkins? Sort of like that. Flat popkins, and they're amazing. I can make this one with cheese and herbs and chicken, it's the best thing in the world with some tea."

[askthelookout]

He smiled sidelong. "Besides the people, sounds like a great place. Peace, quiet, and chicken popkins." Laughing, he folded his hands together, resting his chin on them. "Roland mentioned a little of this, after Nariko told him. But only a little. I don't think he's sure how much of it is his to tell. Do you mind me asking how you got from there to here?" He wrinkled his nose a little, shrugging. "Only the closest I've come to other worlds was the thinny in Mejis, and that thing set my teeth on edge from a hundred paces."

[apassingafternoon]

For a split second she almost told him that the people weren't really so bad. They had been cruel to her, of course, but they were perfectly giving and sweet to just about everyone else. But then there was Nariko's voice in the back of her head you don't need to defend them, and she kept herself quiet. They didn't deserve her kindness even if they had changed after Nariko's arrival, one day Kaine would be able to give that but not now.

"If nothing else it's good to know that we're all very good about keeping privacy," And though she wasn't smiling her voice sounded warm, even grateful.

"It's pretty much all her fault. Maybe a year after my grandma died we suddenly had the Spectres to deal with. It was easy to liken them angry ghosts, so that's what people considered them, but ghosts don't bleed and they don't try to speak. It didn't matter how many I cleared out from my land or near the city, a whole new horde would come back the next night. I wanted to fight smart, not hard, but no one would talk to me. I found Nariko floating in the gorge, about to fall over the edge. I saved her, and then she told me this unbelievable story about horses and Baronies, stuff I've only ever read in books."

"Eventually we got over the cultural exchange and made a deal. Nariko wanted to get back home but I needed someone to speak to our city's 'dinh', you could say. Even though she was foreign it was easier for her to go and ask questions, people always showed up out of nowhere in my world, and they always seemed to come from different places. Some were actually dead but they never quite looked it, hence my utter lack of popularity." Because a little girl asking why a rotting corpse was running around, when said corpse looked and acted perfectly healthy just couldn't go over well.

[askthelookout]

Cuthbert raised one eyebrow, considering this for a moment. "Should I be saving my questions for the end," he asked primly, "or is now a good time to mention that I understood maybe half of that? You have the advantage of me, seeing as I've never even read of your place in books."

Some of it, he could piece together, from her tone if nothing else. But he was curious by nature, and there was a lot that he was already wondering about. What Spectres were, for instance, or how Nariko had got there. Most of all, how it felt to know something like that. He was used to dealing death, and had grown perfectly able to face his own short life expectancy with good cheer, but that didn't mean he was comfortable with the idea of death itself; what she was describing sounded nightmarish to say the least.

But he shook his head, pulling a face. "Never mind. I'm a terrible listener. Go on, so you needed her to talk to this dinh...?"

[apassingafternoon]

She laughed a bit, and shook her head. She thought questions might be easier to ask in the middle since they were from entirely different places, since Kaine could never seem to learn how to change her speech or her mannerisms just right. It left room for that lost in translation effect, but if he wanted her to go on then she would.

"Right. Nariko went to speak with our 'dinh', and was told a legend. That our world had been made by a God, one that lived among us for a long time, long before even my great-grandparents, but that God died. Because that God was dead Spectres were invading our world essentially because there was no great force to keep the out. Like many stories, it was all very weird and jumbled." At least that was how it appeared to Kaine at the time and even now. Too easy, too idealistic, and her instincts had been correct as ever. "Anyway, our 'dinh', Matilda, gave us a map. If we went by that story we'd have to bring back some weird God on our Earth and then everything would be fine. None of us really believed that but, hey, we could get to where that person was supposed to live easily enough, and it wasn't as if there was anything else to go on. For good measure Nariko asked everyone around town, even went as far as Commerce - the city with the ocean - but everyone agreed on this story."

"So we had to get these four keys from monsters. The thing about my world is that it's filled with a bunch of things you might call strange, domesticated yaks, dogs and cats that can move themselves from one place to the next in an instant, and then especially large beasts that tend to guard certain areas. For each key there was a beast to kill, and a sort of," She waved her hands vaguely. "Temple-like area to go into where the key was. After we had all four it was easy to go on our merry way, to the final leg of a shit show that had already been pretty weird, especially when you remember that Claude had been following us the whole time. Mostly being an antagonizing little shit that wouldn't make any sense. He kept trying to get us to turn around but there's no stopping Nariko, and I was still pretty damn tired of fighting Spectres."

Here, Kaine paused, and though she tried to refrain from slipping into a heavy voice, it seemed inevitable. "So we get to this … Castle-like place, made entirely of glass, about the strangest thing I've ever fucking seen. That God, the Shadowlord is what Matilda really called her, wasn't dead at all, in fact she was up and moving around just fine. There we met Claude for a final time and since she was mute, he spoke for her. Most of that legend was pretty true, but the God never died, not physically, she just kind of lost her mind, might as well have been a moving shell of a thing. I didn't even think she understood what was going on. Apparently when she was normal - so back when I was about thirteen - she kept order just by being around, sort of like a grounding force for the entire world. But when she broke everything else did too. Spectres are people who couldn't withstand the force of her song, a kind of magic that's exuded off of her body or, more literally, as an actual sound. Imagine that hearing that noise from a thinny would turn you into a monster that didn't know if it was alive or dead, that could barely speak any language, and only wanted its suffering to end. That's a Spectre. That was what Claude allowed to happen. Some people could ignore that song and would be fine, but many more wouldn't. Because our world tended to pull in people from all over the place it was no wonder that they'd show up there, have no idea what was going on, and then turn into monsters. It was no wonder we kept ending up outnumbered."

"Anyway, what I haven't brought up is that this crazy God chick? Looked an awful lot like Nariko. I mean, maybe twenty years older and with different hair but, seriously, it was like staring into a mirror. We figured if we offed her everything would go back to normal, but Nariko couldn't do it, so I ended up saving her ass. Some other crazy shit happened, suddenly Claude and I were both here. I stayed with Nariko, and we thought Claude was dead but," Again, she waved a hand. "Of course he wasn't. Would have been too easy."

[askthelookout]

"That, I have been told." He grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck. "We're expecting him in the next few days, I understand. At least, Roland thinks so, and Roland's usually got a good instinct for that sort of thing."

He shook his head, looking thoughtful. He wasn't particularly keen on the idea, rather thought that Roland should have let Nariko go and fight the guy herself if she wanted, but he was willing to concede that it wasn't his choice to make. For now, he just sat there, uncharacteristically quiet for a few moments, frowning. "It sounds unbelievable," he said at last, with a crooked little half-smile. "Glass castles, beasts guarding keys, gods with the faces of friends... sounds like a story for children. You seriously think that's dull?"

[apassingafternoon]

"It isn't," She conceded without an extra thought, "But it isn't my story, it's not something I went and did. It was Nariko who ended up with the map, Nariko that saved my life multiple times, that convinced me to move back into the house, Nariko who figured out how to open the castle doors with the keys, and Nariko that brought me here. What part of that sounds like it belongs to me at all?" She had just been there, the one that needed help and really nothing more than that.

She shrugged, "Besides, it's just like you said. It's a story for children, it's something so unbelievable that now, when I try to do normal things, I think it must be a wanting dream I had. A desire to be important that somehow became real, if anything, it probably makes me sound pathetic."

Kaine flicked a rock from the ground and put herself back together. It wasn't Bert's fault that she felt useless. "But, that's how it happened. Before that I just did my best to survive." And it was what he had asked, what she had answered, so technically it was fair.

[askthelookout]

Cuthbert laughed, openly and without malice. "And you have the gall to accuse me of not giving myself enough credit? If you want to put it that way, you don't have a leg to stand on when you say Hambry wasn't Roland's story. By the sounds of it, you did one hell of a lot more to set yours in motion - all I did was get us all framed for murder, if you'll recall."

Smirking, he leaned over and punched her very lightly on the arm. "Either we're both important, or neither of us are. Either way, it sounds like we've both had it easier than the people we're following, so let's be maybe-heroes together, hey?"

[apassingafternoon]

She stared at him with both brows raised, utterly disbelieving. Nothing that she had said was particularly complimentary. The difference was that, in Hambry, it sounded as if Bert had helped Roland not be an unbelievable idiot, and he was important in a battle that sounded unbelievable to her ears. Kaine just sort of tagged along with everything. But she knew better than to argue too much and accepted that well meant punch (because there really could be such a thing).

"I guess those are fair terms." And she didn't think they were logical, not in the least. But if it helped him understand why she saw him a certain way, Kaine would push her own self-doubt aside. "Both important maybe-heroes together, then."

It sounded so ... Ridiculous, so why did she keep smiling?

[askthelookout]

So far as Bert was concerned, it didn't matter why she was smiling. She was, and that was victory enough. He smiled back, grinning from ear to ear, and hopped to his feet. "It's getting dark," he observed, stretching. "And I'm getting a mite hungry. Shall we head in for something to eat?"

[apassingafternoon]

"Everything happens so quickly here." By now she had long accepted that it wasn't a strange illusion, and that was probably enough. "But food is probably a good idea. Do you think they'll let me cook? Or do I have to let them do it?" This was only one of many, many different things she had wanted to ask. "Not that I'm ungrateful or anything, I just didn't know if it was rude to do it myself." She snapped her fingers a bit suddenly as she got up and followed him.

"One time I went to make breakfast for Nariko and I, I got halfway through it and Travis, the cook, chased me out with a knife!" She looked oddly proud of this story, but added: "Of course I kicked his ass and then we had something of a cook off. My eggs were better. That's a much better, personal story!"

[askthelookout]

"Some things happen quickly. Some things happen slow." Cuthbert shrugged. "Things are growing soft around the edges, whatever that means. But it's never been so hard they won't let you cook. At least, not if I make puppy-dog eyes at them." He grinned again, shaking his hair back. "When we were little, I always used to beg all the best sweets off them that way. And then I used them to bribe the rest of our class not to tell Cort when I was making faces behind his back." His laugh was rather rueful. "It didn't work. I swear that man had eyes in the back of his skull."

A personal story for a personal story. That was fair, right?

[apassingafternoon]

She couldn't begin to parse what that was supposed to mean, but it sounded slightly far off from what she had said, or at the very least meant to say. It was easy to let go of as she listened to his story, he must have been a very cute kid but Kaine wouldn't ever say as much. "That's adorable." ... She wouldn't say as much until she did. "I swear, everything I hear about this man named 'Cort' makes me think he must have been my grandmother's soulmate. Or at the very least a comrade in snapping kids to attention."

Yes, a story for a story and, yet speaking easily came to her now. She had worried about what she might say or do, but it came out of her so easily. Looking at her with Bert no one could guess that she was genuinely shy with most everyone else that wasn't Nariko.

"I missed my parents all the time and that was a funny thing, missing people you don't remember correctly. When I was little I would cry over it and my grandma, she was so awkward with it. By the time I was eight she'd start clopping me with her damn cane, 'the soil doesn't need your stupid ass tears!' that's what she'd always say. I'd get so mad at her, I could never understand why she would say that. It made me think she was never upset at losing them."

Of course that wasn't true, not at all. She was grown now, and she understood that her grandmother had probably never felt their loss as deeply as she did when Kaine hadn't been able to restrain her emotions. "I wonder if we would have gotten along at that age."

[askthelookout]

"Probably not," Cuthbert said cheerily. "I was a little shit. I kept getting Ro' and Al in trouble, too. Mostly Ro'. Boy never could back down from a dare." He smiled, rather nostalgically. His own childhood had, for the most part, been idyllic, which only made it harder to look back on. "Once, I persuaded him it would be a great idea to sneak around in the crypts. Alain was too scared, but to be honest, he won on that one. We got caught, and that's the story of how I lost two baby teeth from getting my ears boxed so hard."

He laughed, sticking his hands in his pockets, and started up the hill towards the main building. "Didn't teach me my lesson, though. By the time we got our guns, I'm pretty sure Cort had given up on beating any kind of sense into me."

[apassingafternoon]

"I get the feeling that you only learn lessons when you feel like it," Which wasn't a good thing by any stint of the imagination but rather a simple, unavoidable fact of Cuthbert Allgood, as Kaine knew him. "I also wish I was surprised that there's a crypt here but I'm really not." Nor did it amaze her that Alain had been smart enough to avoid it. Someone with that extra Sense probably shouldn't wander around with the dead.

"This is what they call easy communication, isn't it?" She looked up at him briefly, head tilted curiously. "Usually when I talk to people I'm thinking about punching them in the face. Unless it's Nariko." That was a whole different set of thoughts that played in her head while her friend spoke or ordered her around, or cried about something. "It's very easy with you."

And she wasn't thinking of punching him, either.

[askthelookout]

"I try." He bowed comically, without missing a stride. "Alain's the sensible one to talk to, Jamie's the harsh one, Roland's the honest one. Someone has to be the easy one. Although," he added, after a moment's thought, "if you're not thinking about punching me in the face, you're in the minority."

That wasn't to say he wasn't glad to hear it. Part of him wanted to refute what she'd said about him only learning lessons when he felt like it, though. That dark, sullen part of him wanted to take her aside and explain that there were some lessons you couldn't help learning, lessons that drove their way deep into you and wove into your life, lessons he had learnt the hard way. That if he chose not to learn other lessons, it was only because the weight of the hard lessons was enough already, and sometimes the best way to move on was to refuse to do what was expected.

Part of him wanted to say that. But part of him thought she might know already, and if she didn't... well, then it was better for it to stay that way.

Instead, smiling, he shook his head. "As for the crypt... there's been a city here since the time of the Eld. He's down there himself, somewhere, although we never found him before we got caught. We've had to put our dead somewhere - wouldn't it be more surprising if we didn't?"

[apassingafternoon]

If he wanted to say something or other then he was allowed to. Whether she knew it or not wasn't important, it was that he felt the desire to tell her in the first place. "I guess so."

It was clear that she had never really thought about it, but what he said made sense. You had dead people, you had to do something with them, after all. "I guess it's just that …" This was one of the few topics that she had trouble speaking on, and she was never one to speak without thinking ahead of time. As a result a full moment passed before everything clicked the way it should.

"You know, that family - Nariko's - they've got this belief that things that die don't ever really go away. You do certain things, they stay and it's a negative effect, you do other things, they stay and it can be good. But I think the longer you have things like that near the harder it is to move away. Hard to get out from underneath a shadow when it's always underneath you."

But even now she wasn't entirely sure that it made sense, or maybe it was too emotional a though, but it was all she could come up with.

[askthelookout]

He was quiet for a moment. When he did speak again, it was thoughtful: "I guess maybe that's why. Here, we..." He shrugged, lapsing into silence for another moment before continuing. "They're our fathers, and our fathers' fathers. Arthur Eld, and all his knights. All the gunslingers of our past. Maybe that's a shadow we want to keep with us."

For a moment, he looked pensive, as if he was mulling it over, and then he pulled a face. "Well, I don't know. I leave ghosts and beliefs to Roland and Alain. All I know is, there's been plenty of times since my father died that I've been glad to have him near. And sometimes I've found myself down there, when I've been in need of his guidance."

He shrugged one shoulder, looking rather embarrassed. He didn't make a habit of talking about things like that. More people knew about how he took flowers to his mother's grave, and even that was awkward enough. Telling anyone outside his tet about his trips into the crypt... well, if they were swapping personal stories, that definitely qualified.

"I guess when we move away, we like having something to come back to."

[apassingafternoon]

He had a very good point there, one that seemed to physically hurt her as she took it in. Kaine was quiet, creating yet another unplanned space of silence and even worse than that it didn't do her any good. No matter how she tried to rework her thought process. He was right. Of course it helped more than hurt to have something to come back to. Of course it helped to hold onto those people and their shadows. That was what helped everything move along. She had only ever told herself otherwise to help stave off her own pain.

"That makes sense." But she almost wished that it didn't.

In any case it hadn't dawned on her that he had told her such an intensely personal fact, but even if she did realize it Kaine wouldn't have known what to say in response. She didn't have anything of that caliber but, hey, at least she could make great sandwiches.

[askthelookout]

If he'd been Alain, he would have known what to do with that silence. If he'd been Roland, it would probably have passed him by entirely. Unfortunately, Cuthbert was neither of those people, and so he saw that he'd upset her, without having any idea how to help. He settled for touching her arm, feeling profoundly clumsy, and giving her a sympathetic kind of smile. "You alright?"

[apassingafternoon]

"Yes." No. "I'm just thinking," Certainly a dangerous prospect, all things considered. "Even though it hurts to have lost people, it's nice that you can still go and speak with them that way."

It was something she lacked. "Even though they're gone you're still shaped by them a little. It's nice." For them. For people who had shadows to walk in and grow from. But what exactly did that mean for anyone without that legacy? "... Apologies." She tried to smile, and it only faltered gently. "Or, as you would say, 'cry pardon', I'm just being emotional."

Which was hardly like her, but she would think over that issue later on.

[askthelookout]

"Hey." He stopped, taking her arm, and frowned deeply at her. "You're allowed to be emotional. One of the perks of being a woman, as I understand it. But, look, alright... I'm not Roland, I can't say this the way he does, but I'll try." He took a deep breath, letting go of her sleeve. "We're all shaped by them. That's what it means to remember the face of your father. As long as you do what's right by those who loved you, do your best to make them proud, they're always a part of you and what you do. You're still shaped by them. You don't have to know them to be shaped by them."

He wrinkled his nose, looking profoundly frustrated with himself. "Told you I couldn't explain it like Ro'. Took me until a couple of years ago even to figure out that forgetting the face of your father wasn't just some bullshit catechism."

[apassingafternoon]

"You really must not have been listening to that whole thing about my grandma." Or maybe it was a sizable difference in her upbringing. It was never that she had been explicitly told not to be emotional, it just wasn't ... Comfortable to do so. "And to be fair, I would never really want Roland to say anything greatly personal to me unless it concerns Nariko." Frankly she thought he sucked at anything more than staring intensely. If anyone was talented in communicating themselves it had to be Alain or Nariko.

"... But you're probably right. It's still difficult to imagine. I didn't know anything about my parents, or my grandmother, not really. But maybe it's the sort of thing you figure out with time anyway." She looked off to one side, scraping her heel along the ground, a nervous habit of hers. "Something you learn to figure out when you're given a little help."