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[colur]

Date & Time: Vague late July, early June
Location: All over, especially where the damage is the worst.
Characters: Eilonwy and you (???)
Summary: Eilonwy explores Exsilium after the bombing, trying to find ways to help.
Warnings: N/A


Eilonwy never liked to ask permission. It seemed rather pointless, when you'd already made up your mind. Apples do not have lips to ask the ground, but they fall anyway. But here there was no one for her to ask, and the freedom made her unfamiliar. Knowing what to do was very helpful, even if you did not plan on doing it.

And here, she did not know what to do.

Oh, she thought she did, at first, she was quite certain that she had to escape. There were people counting on her at home. Counting on her for proper curtsies and polite conversation, but counting on her nonetheless. But then the bombing happened, and she realized that the people here needed help, too.

Not that she was exactly sure how to go about it. Today she was climbing through the rubble, her knees scraped and hair wild, looking for mouths to feed or shoulders to throw blankets on. To help people, you know. Hmmph.

[ ooc: Tag in whatever format you prefer. I will match! ]

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[khajidont]

"Sure," Jaime said, and started to walk. He preferred flying when he was in costume for good reason - it was a pain in the ass navigating all this debris, and even going from one street to the next took far, far longer than he liked.

Seeing as they had a ways to go, he decided he might as well strike up a conversation. "So, Eilonwy, you been here long?"

[colur]

"Months," she said, adding quickly, "which seems like an awful long time to be here, to me." She began to walk a bit ahead, twirling a little, though her dress was too soiled and torn to get the full effect. It was just nice to be moving, she thought.

"It's not the very longest I've been stuck somewhere, though. What about you?"

[khajidont]

"About two months now, which seems pretty long to me too. I've never been stuck anywhere before. Not unless you count school," he said, shooting a grin at her. Two months was plenty for him, if he was honest about it - he had never been away from his family for this long, and despite the fact that he was glad they didn't have to live in a place like this, he missed them. He even missed school.

"Where were you stuck before now?"

[colur]

"I was learning how to be a proper princess." In actuality, she'd just come around to the idea, even if the thought of lessons still made her crinkle her nose unglamorously. "There are an awful lot of lessons for awfully little things."

[khajidont]

Jaime didn't stop in his stride altogether, but his step did stutter as he looked over at her, eyebrows raised high in disbelief. "A princess? Seriously?"

Out of everything he had expected her to be trapped in, that certainly wasn't it. Still, he supposed that this place managed to snag in all types - it just so happened that some of them were princesses without any apparent sense of aversion for mucking around in filthy rubble. He kicked away a piece of rubble as they walked. "Bet they didn't teach you how to deal with all this."

[colur]

"I don't think it would make a very good joke." She turned to look at him then. Eilonwy didn't have a kingdom, so perhaps she wasn't a proper princess after all.

"They taught me not to go outside without a proper chaperone. Especially when it's not raining. You have to have someone to throw their cloak over the puddles." Queen Teleria would be shuddering— when Eilonwy pictured what her face would be like, seeing Eilonwy trudging through the mud, livid at the indignity but determined to put quite the best face on it, well. It was almost easy to miss her.

"I've discovered, though, that if you pull up your skirts, they won't get so wet. Furthermore, cloth may be cleaned, and failing that, mended."

Not that she often bothered.

[khajidont]

Jaime whistled lowly at that particular description of her life, not that it was something that came entirely as a surprise to him. He'd taken history classes and read plenty of books, but it was something else to actually speak to someone who lived like that.

"It looks like you're doing pretty good even with all those lessons," he said, hazarding that though she was of royal blood, she wouldn't appreciate him suddenly busting out the your majesties... or whatever it was princesses were supposed to be called.

"Must've been hard to adjust."

[colur]

"Before coming to the Isle of Mona, I lived at Caer Dalben. That was a farm. And before that I was kept in the tower of the enchanter queen, Achren. I just think this place is like an awfully big farm, or a very large dungeon, more like."

There were some things that seemed very strange to her, of course. But Eilonwy was not as fond of talking about those, especially since she liked to say things matter-of-factly.

"Where do you come from, then? Is it always so gloomy there?"

[khajidont]

"So you've traveled more than me," Jaime said, which was an odd notion coming from a princess. Apparently she wasn't exactly like the ones in all the stories, confined by trappings of wealth and status. He's certainly never lived on a farm.

"I'm from the South - a place called El Paso, and it's nothing like this. There's a whole lot more colour, and a whole lot more sun. I've never been to a place that rains this much in my life." He tilted his head up, staring a little mournfully at the omnipresent drizzle and grey clouds that infested Exsilium. "It's nice there. Peaceful, most of the time."

[colur]

"I've travelled many places, but I've never been allowed to go far. It's sensible, perhaps, to not go very far." She looked at the sun, or what could be seen of it here, dulled behind the clouds. "El Paso sounds lovely."

[khajidont]

"It is. I'd say that you should visit someday, if you were from my world." He tore his eyes away from the sky, though the sights around them weren't any less depressing than the ones above them. Some people spoke more about their homes than others here, but he didn't mind admitting, "I miss it."

Miss it as he might, he couldn't help but feel a little relieved that he hadn't been sent on a mission back there quite yet. He wasn't sure how he could have taken the sights that the natives of Tokyo or New York were afflicted with, of their homes being burned to the ground.

[colur]

"It's not such an awful thing, you know." Stopped in her own tracks, she followed the gaze of his eyes. They didn't seem to go anyplace. "To have someplace to miss, I mean. Missing something is a way of carrying it with you." That sounded like something Dallben would have said, she thought. And Dallben was almost always right.

"But it's not just that you were thinking of, is it?"

[khajidont]

"Never thought about it that way. That's a nice way of looking at it." After speaking to some people here, yeah, he had to admit that he was one of the lucky ones to have a place and a support network dear enough to him to actually miss. "And hey, I've still got the pictures on my cell phone."

He supposed it wasn't all that surprising that she noticed that his thoughts weren't exactly completely straightforward when he lapsed into his brief silence, and there was no harm in sharing them.

"I was just thinking about the guys who used to live in the places we saw on Elmer's world. Seeing your home destroyed like that... that must've been hard."

[colur]

"I had only known my home for a week before seeing it washed under the ocean."

She hadn't gotten to talk about that, since it happened. Maybe that was why it fell out of her so suddenly. "It was like— having clothes that finally fit, and then spilling ink all over them." Her eyes were tracing the hem of her skirt, now, not the grey of the sky, or the mood of the horizon.

It occurred to her that it was rude to feel too deeply. Eilonwy wasn't sure why, but at court no one was permitted to be sad. "I'm sorry," she said. "I've spoken out of turn."

[khajidont]

As Eilonwy spoke, Jaime felt his gut twist a little at the thought of it and he spared a moment to silently reprimand himself for his careless words. He should have known that something like this had happened before, that others had seen their lands laid to ruin.

"No, no, it's not out of turn," he was quick to say. "You can talk about it. If you want to. I don't mind."

[colur]

"No," she said, sorrowful but not scolding. "I don't think there is anymore for me to say. That is, I haven't a clue what to say, now. So I must be done talking."

[khajidont]

Regardless of her tone, Jaime fell silent for a moment, feeling suitably chastened. The Transports were a varied bunch, but one thing so many of them seemed to have in common was a difficult past.

"I'm sorry. About your home."

[colur]

"I have had other homes. And perhaps I will have more, one day, for I do not know where my feet will carry me. And, if you want to know the truth of it, I've never been very good at standing still." She smiled at Jaime, a small smile, but encouraging. She felt better now, though she couldn't say why.

[khajidont]

If nothing else, Eilonwy was a surprising girl, and Jaime found himself smiling a little back at her, glad that she didn't have to dwell for too long on her loss.

"So you're a wanderer," he said, then glanced around their surroundings. He didn't feel the fact that they were trapped in this one city too keenly, being vastly used to staying in the same spot himself, but he supposed others might.

"Being here's one way to travel."

[colur]

"I do not think I'm a wanderer. I've simply not found my proper place, yet. That would be like buying the first hat you tried on, no matter how ill it fit." It probably helped that her earliest memories were being stuck at Spiral Castle with the horrid Queen Achren.

"I have heard we are to sent elsewhere. But so far it's only been to new ruins, here."

[khajidont]

"I guess some of us just get lucky," Jaime said, figuring that she was right - at the very least, it made sense when she said it. He honestly couldn't imagine living anywhere besides El Paso, not when all his friends and family were still there, but he had the good fortune of being born into a family in which he truly belonged.

"I haven't been sent on any of the missions I've been hearing about yet, but I mean..." He raised his hands, gesturing around them. "It's practically been too busy to even think about that sort of thing. No point in going to war when the homefront's still a mess, right?"

[colur]

"Some would say the only way to protect a border is to . There are many lords who desire peace so much they make war on their neighbors. It's a bit like— like cutting your hand off to have something to bandage. I'm surprised they haven't tried it. These Initiative people don't seem very smart."

But Eilonwy was not sure if she wanted them to be smart. She did not know if that would make things better or worse for her, and all who were caught her with her.

[khajidont]

"I think the Initiative not being smart enough for their job is maybe the one thing everyone here can agree on," Jaime said, a hint of a laugh - however grim of one - in his voice. He didn't think that the Initiative was evil, or anything as simple as that. They had to be desperate with these sorts of methods.

This did not mean, however, that Jaime had any inclination to feel much sympathy for the guys.

"Don't go on giving them any ideas. I'd like to make sure we've all got places to live before they plan on making any more moves."

[colur]

Eilonwy didn't believe them evil either. They were not the Lord of Death, nor one of his twisted minions— they were not creatures that feared the light. Eilonwy would call them mean, perhaps. She would definitely call them foolish.

"Do you suppose they're listening, right now?" She did not think so, but this place was still quite strange to her.

[khajidont]

"Nah, I was just joking around," Jaime returned. He had considered the amount of surveillance that he figured the Initiative would have to do, and then conceded the point that they were probably too busy to listen to very much at all - aside from anyone who may be a problem, that was. However bleak their circumstances were, people were mostly the same in speaking of idle things to pass the time.

"If they're listening to anything, it's probably the network."