[open] after a while they always get it

[rorosa]

Date & Time: 12/02 - ANY TIME AT ALL. YOU DECIDE.
Location: rural parts of the outlands; very occasionally the city streets
Characters: Corosa Nyem (rorosa), Rosalyn Cross (redemptio), Aileen Kimbler (seamend), Tier Halibel (sacrificar), Simmaeri (allsongs), ... and anyone else who wants to say hi I guess (though fyi, these are all mostly wrap-up threads; this character will be dropped soon)
Summary: COROSA CONTINUES TO BE A CRANKY SMELLY HOBO. possibly passes some interesting info on before he leaves. possibly gets some new clothes god.
Warnings: N/A

[ ooc: for characters explicitly named above, threads are started below: rosalyn, aileen, halibel, simmaeri ]

[ Corosa's a common sight out in the nicer parts of the outlands; he avoids the hollowed-out cities and anything that looks even slightly urban, but he's right at home in what little countryside there is. It's now been long enough that he's quite familiar with the lands out here, and getting better at hunting game.

You might find him shooting at trees for target practice, or stalking after a ... seven-antlered buck. Or maybe asleep out in the open. Maybe perched on top of a hill to squint suspiciously at the sprawling ruins that he's been so diligently steering clear of for the past month or so. Or maybe just wandering around squinting suspiciously at the world in general, that's a thing he does. ]

Comments

[allsongs]

As always, if offered, Simmaeri was disinclined to refuse. But that bag of apples was quickly shifted from his wrist to her shoulder opposite him as she detected his discomfort – little tensions in his arm, perhaps a little shifting in his expression. It hardly fazed her, but she did wish to be kind to her guide.

Her fingers curled against his sleeve as she eased into step to match his, watching the way ahead with only the faintest guesses as to what was waiting ahead, what he intended to share.

"Will you tell me what it is now," she asked, still staring ahead, "or will I wait?"

[rorosa]

"Er-- you don't need to--" Corosa made a series of uncomfortable protests as he watched Simmaeri take the bag back onto herself, but she seemed set in her actions. He sighed, and kept pace.

"It's some...." Corosa frowned. He hadn't any reservations about telling her before; he wasn't the sort of person who usually kept secrets, even if they were meant to be a pleasant surprise. But finding the words to convey the strangeness of the situation was suddenly beyond him.

He sighed to himself.

"You'll want to wait," he said. He wondered, briefly, what her reaction would be. Probably subdued, as most of her reactions appeared to be.

He kept moving.

[allsongs]

A small sound, accepting his response. Wait, then. She had no issue with that; it was more his time than hers, truly.

Of course, she was not about to accept silence for very long.

"What will you tell me, then?" she probed, an amused note in her tone. "What you see or learn in much days, away. What you think of."

[rorosa]

"Well, I...."

She asked, so he talked. Not the whole way, but for as much of it as he could. He told her about the monsters from about a month back; the priest and the monk who'd showed up to join him. That led Corosa to speak of the girl from the other day. A priestess, from home. Not familiar faces, not all of them, but familiar uniforms, familiar roles. So he talked of Rune-Midgard, too. Only a little.

Mostly he spoke of the here and now. Of the ruins that spread over so much of the country, of roads crumbling, of how desolate it all was. He told her he'd traveled far north enough to visit the other city.

"There's only the two, I think," he said, of the cities. He stopped walking halfway through that sentence, scanning the area. They were well outside of the city now. He wasn't certain of how long they'd walked. Most of the day, perhaps. He looked over to Simmaeri. "Are you hungry?"

[allsongs]

As always, Simmaeri listened well, but it was an attention not only on his words and their rhythms. She took care now, when they had their rare meetings, to listen for the cracks or rattles that might forewarn her of that torment he'd had below the ground, and was as grateful to find little of that as she was for what news he shared.

Rune-Midgard...She had heard it before. She was pleased to find so much connecting and relating now. These worlds had more form than the dingy city they all resided in.

She nearly walked ahead of him at that halt, digging her heel in and opening her eyes. It was a little like waking out of a lucid sort of dream, with her ears filling more with the empty air around them than any particular sound.

Simmaeri turned her head and looked when questioned.

"I need no food," she replied, giving a slight shake of her head. "But men like you do. You will stop when you must, yes?"

[rorosa]

Ah. Right. He'd forgotten, or purposefully put it out of mind.

"Yes," he agreed, with a small sigh. He wasn't quite hungry yet -- maybe when the sun started to set. So he picked up his step again.

"Why... is that?" he asked, haltingly, guardedly, glancing sidelong at Simmaeri. "That you don't have to eat. Are you human?"

[allsongs]

"No."

That hadn't been addressed between them, had it? Simmaeri thought it as minor an occurrence as one forgetting to wipe one's shoe at the door before walking through the house. Of course, given the slow, uncertain rhythm of Corosa's words, she was to take care not to be so light on the subject.

"I walk with humans because I choose free to," she said, glancing at him with a slight turn of her head. "But I am not. I look this way because I was happy to. I will not look any other way again."

[rorosa]

Strange. Corosa fell into silence, back into his own thoughts, trying to reconcile this new knowledge with several months' worth of taking Simmaeri's humanity for granted. Demihuman, perhaps? But no. She looked entirely human. So...

He sighed, realizing that it was an exercise in futility. She wasn't from Rune-Midgard. Maybe -- likely -- things worked differently, in her homeland.

And, well, what mattered was that she obviously wasn't hostile. Not to Corosa, and not to the city.

He kept looking straight ahead, though, and his frown would not leave his face. It wasn't an angry expression, or even a disappointed one. Only puzzled.

"You didn't always look this way, then."

[allsongs]

She shook her head.

"No, I was different."

The conversation had come up very recently, that old shape. Good practice for the present. But bloody huge and ridiculous had a disbelieving flair to them from Adam's mouth that Simmaeri was unwilling to imitate – not without better understanding.

But he didn't ask what she had looked like, and so there was little urgency to say so. Why, rather, seemed the better route.

"I had free choice to change when I found the humans. I did because I heard the words they speak. I wanted to know them."

[rorosa]

"I see." Corosa felt an itch, and gently disengaged his arm to scratch at the back of his head.

He continued further without saying anything, lost in his own thoughts. Wondering. Trying his hardest to see Simmaeri as... whatever she really was. Not human. But Corosa tended to get mired in his ways, stuck, and he found it hard to think of her any differently from before. Perhaps that was a good thing.

"Was it worth it?" he asked, after a little while. "Or do you want to go back to the way you were before?"

[allsongs]

Worth it?

Simmaeri tilted her head to look at him in a sidelong glance. Words of value alone would have arisen the need to clarify, but he had given her enough to understand what he was asking. Her mouth quirked with a small smile.

"I will miss it always," she said, turning her gaze ahead. "I cannot go back. But I am happy to be here this way. I learn much, and it is good. And many people I find to know are happy to know me."

[rorosa]

Corosa relaxed, and even he wasn't quite sure why. Maybe it put him at ease to know that she couldn't... turn back into whatever she was, before, that he wouldn't be at risk of having to deal with that. Or maybe it was just good to know that she was content.

In any case, he was satisfied by Simmaeri's answer. So Corosa settled back into an easy rhythm for the rest of the day's journey, turning back to idle conversation.

When the sun began to set, he pulled them off the road towards a copse of trees that he had marked out on previous journeys. The branches overhead criss-crossed thickly enough to form a good cover from the rain.

Once he'd pulled them amongst the trees, Corosa stepped away from Simmaeri and looked around, frowning.

"We'll camp here for the evening," he said. "I'll need to head out to hunt for food-- will you be fine on your own, for a bit?"

[allsongs]

"Yes. I will stay."

A very familiar arrangement, really. Simmaeri had no qualms about it, this same old thing: Waiting for the man to return from his chore or task. The number of times would be impossible to recall even if she felt compelled to try. Instead, she took to her own role and cleaned up the space Corosa had chosen to something a bit more meaningful than cold dirt and stone. A bit more of a chore without tools, but the work was engaging, brought to mind a few tunes for such things.

We work to make ready the place for our men to return to.

Brisk, dutiful songs of women in the plains and the trees. Never so loud as to possibly startle or disturb a near or distant hunt, but enough to keep a rhythm, keep everyone moving in a great fluidity and near industrial way.

Simmaeri took liberty to sparking a fire and, with as much as she could do done (what a sad landscape; no brush or trees for comfort or bedding), she sat and patiently waited, humming the tune again to herself as she tapped fingers against her hand to keep time.

[rorosa]

Simmaeri's song set him off quick, moving more swiftly than he might normally. He was gone for a while, hunting for sparse game, checking traps that he laid out earlier in the morning. One of them yielded a rabbit with three ears. He took it, and searched a little while more for something more substantial. No luck there. But that was all right. Besides, he suspected that the bag Simmaeri had brought with her might contain more food, and if she didn't need to eat, well....

When he returned to the camp, he settled down at the very edge of the light cast by the fire to prepare the rabbit: skinning, cleaning, gutting. It took him much longer than it would take most men. But he'd long since figured out how to do these things one-handedly, and was now fairly practiced at it.

Once done with that, he skewered the rabbit and set it to roast above the fire. As he waited for it to cook, he nodded at Simmaeri.

"Thank you for starting the fire," he said. It occurred to him that it'd been a long while since he'd gone out traveling with someone -- and it was nice to have company.

[allsongs]

Simmaeri gave him a gentle nod as reply, having held still and patient through his work. Women's work for many places she'd called home, but not universally so; it was on some level fascinating to watch this man prepare his meal, maimed though he himself was. The lengths to which men adapted to their individual plights always drove her to admiration. It took no shortage of strength of many kinds to have come to that place and time, with or without the meddling of strange people and powers.

A good moment. Simmaeri shifted herself, more relaxed than reverent with the shifting from dusk to a darker night. Out there, the sky was still poisoned by the centuries of chemical missteps, but stars twinkled easier without the intrusion of electric glow.

"Tell me about your sky," she said at one point, having given Corosa more than enough time to take care of his meal at his own pace. Her head tilted down slightly to catch glimpse of him. "The one of home."