exsiliumlogs | we with the trees [OPEN]

Entry tags:

we with the trees [OPEN]

Date & Time: Tuesday, Wednesday, all during the day
Location: The ruined gardens
Characters: Simmaeri, you
Summary: We're having us an old-school Disney princess moment up in here
Warnings: moderate levels of me-Jane-you-Tarzan are to be expected; homegirl's still learning

The city's dingiest tones became much more pronounced the day Simmaeri found that unkempt house of green. It had been such a long time since she'd wandered through the stuff — grass, even — that its finding was all the more absorbing. It had to have been only a matter of time, she was sure...but she came across it so suddenly, without even seeking it out. A pleasant surprise.

The stresses and cares the voices on the network had were not shared by her; there was still too much to learn before the truth of her purpose in Exsilium would be found. Welcome to Exsilium; there is much to discuss. She still remembered those first words upon arrival. Only a matter of time. Until then, it was her and the abandoned flora, sadly lacking in the birdsong she knew from lands far away. Her voice filled the void, lifting over the silent leaves of twisted, snarled trees, singing out the words of foreign places. She sat, half-shaded from the roaming sun, and sang.

The melodies were gentle and warm, full of affection for the little, green world. Farmers' evening chants, festival hymns for the turning of seasons...there were countless songs to suit her mood. Soon, though, she found herself toying and calling out Edelweiss, the little lullaby Rosalyn had sung to her over the computer. She had quickly sketched the song to heart and found herself hungry to try it, and so it went, over and over, playing with the pitch of her voice — at times the tone of a youth, and others the quiver of a worldly woman. It was her pleasure to do so, and her gift. The song pleased her well.

Once more.

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Granted, the place was terribly dilapidated, broken down, considerably more open than most other buildings in the city. But Corosa still did not like the look of the gardens, so he refused to go in. He'd only wandered by because he heard the singing, recognized the voice, felt obligated to stop and at least try to greet one of the few people he'd actually knew here. Even if they couldn't even speak the same language, yet.

"Simmaeri?" Corosa called out, carefully stepping over debris as he prowled around the structure's perimeter. He could peer within, through all the broken glass, cracks in what possibly once passed as a wall. But he could not sight Simmaeri herself, yet.

The song rose in volume almost immediately in reply, having caught the sound of her own name between words. Louder and changed: The melody shifted to longer notes, the sort that almost seemed to blend one into the other, making a near-endless kind of sound. It was easier to follow, even without the beckoning wishes peppered within.

I'm here. Can you find me? Will you come?

Corosa didn't say anything else for a while, busy stumbling around the edges of the gardens, still staring suspiciously at broken glass and twisted steel and forming his evaluation of the place. In the end, the walls were still too much like walls, and the ceiling still too much like a ceiling, and he shook his head at it. No. He would not heed that siren call. He could hear whispers in the back of his head already, dark and evil.

He did find Simmaeri, however. There was an open window, the glass knocked out long ago. Corosa's boots crunched in the fragments as he stepped close, with a scowl. She was still some distance away, half-hidden behind trees and greenery, but he was fairly certain that it was her.

"Simmaeri." Corosa placed his hand against the remains of the window sill. He winced, and quickly withdrew his arm back to his side. "Over here."

At the sound, Simmaer quieted to a hum, more to herself than anyone; she wasn't one for ending a note so abruptly. She waited, listening for the sound of brush rustling and cracking, but heard none. Just the offbeat chiming of shards of glass tinkling to the ground. She looked about, hesitating a moment more before over here sounded, and then rose, dusting herself off as she leaned, peering past low-hanging branches to catch glimpse of the human shape.

She moved, careful and slow, stepping over prickly, dead bushes and old, fallen branches. It took a bit of zigzagging, using branches still standing in the way as checks for balance with one hand while the other held a fistful of fabric to keep from getting snagged.

When she reached the empty frame, her hand settled on the metal siding, letting out a slow exhale and looking the man up and down. She smiled.

"Hello, Corosa Nyem."

"Hello." Corosa nodded to her through the frame, slightly surprised by her greeting. And by the fact that she remembered his name.

He craned his neck a little, leaning to the side, looking past her into the gardens. It seemed unfortunate, to have all that plant life confined within a single building. Corosa would have liked to see the rest. But it was no great loss, he supposed. It wasn't as if he didn't see enough trees and leaves outside of the city.

He held his hand out to Simmaeri. "It's good to see you again."

Her smile warmed and broadened at the exchanged greeting, quite pleased to carry a little more weight in the conversations in that language. Reflexively, her hand reached over and reached for his, giving it a gentle squeeze.

"Good, yes," she echoed, nodding in turn. "Much days." It's been a small while, hasn't it?

"Yes. It has been busy." Corosa frowned. He gave a very light tug on Simmaeri's hand.

Then froze a little, realizing that his hand had crossed that not-so-clear boundary between outside and in, fingertips stretching past scorched marks on the ground where perhaps there'd once been more wall, more supports. He stared.

"What is this?" Corosa said, as if musing aloud.

He raised his head. This time to take in the twisted metal beams, again, fallen statues blocked in stone. It looked enormous, even from where he stood. Big enough to hide an enormous hall, perhaps, dark and cold and lost....

He was still a very strange man. Simmaeri felt a twinge of worry — had she misspoke? Failed to respond properly? Or was there something else at play; his oddness wasn't something new to her, after all. Just not understood.

She followed his gaze upward at the question, squinting a little. What is? Well...she didn't know those words, either.

Her other hand closed around his wrist to get his attention, giving him a look and nodding her head in a direction. Letting go, she began to walk along the perimeter of the garden, giving one other gesture to follow along. She'd find the way in that had allowed her through.

Corosa withdrew his hand the moment it was free, quickly, cradling it against a shoulder. He watched Simmaeri go for a few steps before trotting to catch up with her.

"Are you doing well?" Corosa asked. Inane, useless talk, doubly useless given that Simmaeri still did not have a full grasp upon the language. But it could not hurt to talk. And listen, and absorb. That was almost how you taught children, was it not? Certainly there was nothing to be learned from silence.

"Still learn," she replied. It was a question of her, wasn't it? Though she had heard well in so many contexts it was hard to say what it was he was asking. "Still much." She stepped over broken branches, a little laugh in her exhale. She glanced over at Corosa with a smile.

"You help."

"Right," Corosa said. "Of course."

He was still slightly puzzled, not quite able to make out the full meaning of her words. Granted, the fact that she knew words, could form phrases, that was a fair leap from when they'd first met, already. She was a quick learner.

He looked back at her and past her into the garden again. They were rounding the edges, past what looked like a fallen idol. Corosa thought he could make out a human shape: the bridge of a nose, maybe, the worn ridges of an eye. He pointed towards it as they went.

"What is that?" he asked. He didn't expect her to know, but they'd passed enough of them that Corosa felt he ought to at least point it out.

That?

Simmaeri slowed, turning her head and searching around for an unusual that. It wasn't hard to spot. She made a thoughtful hum, pausing in-step before drawing away from the broken walls and moving toward the ruined statue. Bending down, she brushed away dried and decayed leaves and branches, shaking the dust off her fingers after finding the face beneath it.

She said a word, rolling an r and breathing out the last vowel with a sigh. Ruined. Even the thick, heavy-walled city of some strange future was not immune to the decaying of the old ways. Simmaeri straightened up, giving the dusty remains on her fingers a fleeting glance before stepping over another fragment of broken figure and veering toward the divide separating them and walking on.

Corosa watched her go, uncertain if she would be back. When she did, he lingered anyway, still looking past her and wondering. A strange place to put so many idols, a strange place to put a garden... just a strange place, in general. But at least it seemed relatively benign and empty. Back in his world, Corosa would have expected the place to be teeming with monsters.

"Is there no one else here?" he asked. He gestured to Simmaeri as they moved on. "Just you?" And those things, he added privately, as yet another stone monolith started to edge into sight.

"Just me?" Simmaeri wondered aloud grasping a portion of metal frame to help her over a tricky patch of overgrowth. "No. You, here."

The metal framing was broken and bent just a few steps, enough to be a kind of makeshift opening – the place she had entered in the first place. She lingered just short of it, giving Corosa a questioning look. Was he going to pass through?

"Sure." Just Simmaeri, then. These days Corosa counted himself as about half a person, possibly less.

Corosa stopped when she did but did not take notice of the opening right away, not until he turned back to face it. He looked. Glass on the floor here, too. The metal beams twisted out of shape. He doubted that it had ever been a proper door but it looked as though it was often used as one, these days.

He scowled and stepped back. It seemed clear that Simmaeri wanted him to come in.

He shook his head. "No. I can't."

Very odd.

Simmaeri watched, eyes narrowed slightly in scrutiny, and wondered. Having been reluctant to enter a store seemed a stretch different than this, but it was very much part of what little experience she had with Corosa. That was different though, wasn't it? Or...

Hm.

She flexed her grip on the metal before making her decision. Stepping over shards of glass and ducking a little to avoid low-hanging frame, she slipped out of the sanctuary, smoothing down hair that was disturbed along the way. When she straightened back up, she gave Corosa a look, eyebrows lifted. Next?

The trees and things were pleasant, of course, but she was hardly going to let him slink off so soon. And if he wasn't going in, she wouldn't stay.

Corosa, who'd tensed in anticipation of derision or disbelief, relaxed when he saw Simmaeri simply cross over instead. But as relief flooded in so did sensibility, and he remembered then that he'd meant to ask her about investigating inside for signs of a prison....

Then again, how would he even get that across to her? Maybe it was a lost cause in the first place. It probably was, if Corosa had thought it through a little more.

"Here," Corosa said, with a sigh. He held his arm out again. "Sorry. It's a long story. Perhaps I'll tell it to you sometime." Unlikely, but she couldn't know that.

Without qualm or hesitation, Simmaeri took the arm and drew herself over to his side, paying no mind to the little snags and scratches the brambles took of her clothes along the way. Her eyes did not leave his face even after he'd uttered the last of it, seeking to pick out meaning from his countenance. Strange, sullen man.

There was still plenty of perimeter for them to walk, and she was not bothered to follow along on the grayer side. Unlike their last walk together, she took to speaking. Singing, rather, filled with those little spells for sight and understanding.

Very many years ago
A king from a rich land was loved like a god
He soon believed himself to be so and became arrogant and cruel
He made the people slaves to his will
They raised great statues of his image
The land was covered
The temples were picked bare to build them

The god under the earth stirred with anger
All the statues crumbled
The king was crushed
Many wept
Where the stones fell nothing grew again

Corosa instinctively pulled the two of them a little further away from the edge of the perimeter, but only by a few steps. Otherwise he was quite content to walk along with Simmaeri, and listen.

He rather wished he hadn't listened quite so closely. Her voice was lovely as always, that was nothing to complain about, but the melody made him melancholy in a way that he was not familiar with. Corosa used to be practical, realistic, unwilling to think any further than the present and the future. Things had changed in recent years, of course, but his base instinct had at least remained the same. So while sorrow was something he was now well-familiar with, it was still something that he hated to bring to the surface.

He sighed when the song was done.

"I wish I understood your words," he said, quietly. "And your songs."

She gave him a long, sideways glance, calculating. Strange, sad man. Or, perhaps, not strange; there were many things in time and the world to weary a man and leave him a sad shade of his hopes and dreams. And, granted, the song was of somber stuff; it was sensible to be affected so.

"You wish?" she prompted. "Wish is?"

"Understanding," Corosa said. He sighed a little at the futility of the conversation; couldn't speak of understanding when understanding was the base problem, after all. But if they were both going to be stuck here, then he supposed they would eventually manage to work through that hurdle.

He shook his head. Never mind.

"Do you think we'll be here long enough to understand one another?" he asked, looking up into the sky. That thought was more depressing than hopeful, and that weighed heavy in his voice. He wanted to be home. He'd wanted that for the past two and a half years.

Wish is understanding.

How many times had she heard understand so far? Do you understand? Can't you understand me? Why don't you understand? And now, long enough to understand? It was something to be said of her...well, understanding. The lack of. And repetition made it clearer. Wish, however...That would need more time.

She watched him, taking care to study his manner closely. He was not the most impatient teacher, nor the most energetic, but very giving. Without knowingly being so, at that. The weary note in his voice framed the question better.

"No long," she said softly, smiling a faintly wry kind of smile. Not long for her. "I will learn. More. You help."

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we with the trees [OPEN]

[8/14, tuesday morning]

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