ioduanlogs | [OPEN] finding his feet

Entry tags:

[OPEN] finding his feet

Characters: Kit and the Medicine Seller + OPEN
Date: Throughout March.
Location: Throughout the city.
Situation: Kit is... struggling.
Warnings/Rating: None yet, will add as needed.

I. CRIME (4); JUSTICE (3) [OPEN]

This is not the first time in his life that Kit has lied to an authority figure, and it's probably not going to be the last. When the Erol'a girl thrusts a parcel into his grip and asks him to hold it for her before bolting, he does so; maybe he's just a sucker for someone in a tight spot. Maybe it's easier for him to trust a petty criminal than an officer of the law; two months in and he still hasn't managed to get his thumb on the beating pulse of this place yet. Who in the city to trust, who not to trust. The corruption here--if it is here--doesn't stink like it did in Orzammar, or in Kirkwall. He's rudderless.

Maybe the Sentry can tell he's lying, and just takes it easy on him. Maybe it's the bibiru sitting cutely at the end of a leash Kit's holding. For whatever reason, he's left alone.

The girl comes back sometime later, and though Kit can't precisely read the play of emotions across her reptilian face, he supposes there's some gratitude there. She certainly gives him a decent enough cut of the proceeds of the criminal enterprise in gratitude. Once she's said her farewells and departed, Kit is left leaning against the wall with his share of the rhinn, and a feeling of deep foreboding in his cut.

He pockets the money, lights a cigarette, and elects to people watch for a time.

II. WANDERING THE CITY [OPEN]

The beach he discovered last month has become a regular haunt now.

It took him a little time to sort out the route there the second go around, but once he gets the hang of the transit connections it's not too difficult to retrace his steps, and his journey on the Skytrain, back to the secluded stretch of beach where the waves come in gently and the wind off the bay is warm on his skin.

This time he's ambling barefoot through the ankle-deep surf, his shirt off and his skin still damp with droplets of water; looks like someone went for a swim. He's got his hands in his pockets and his eyes turned with scrutinizing interest down into the water, searching for bits of seaglass or interesting shells to pop into his pockets. Hopping along the shoreline next to him in parallel, his bibiru seems especially concerned that he's been swimming in the ocean. It chirrups and cheeps at him worriedly every few paces.

"Calm down, salroka, I'm fine," he assures it distractedly, then crouches down to inspect a possible glass fragment--then grimaces. Ugh, seaweed.

III. THE DREAMING BRIDGE [THE MEDICINE SELLER]

Kit knows logically that it is foolish to take the Medicine Seller's persistence absence too personally--the guy had easily been the strangest elf he'd ever met in his life back in Kirkwall, appearing and then vanishing from his life like some kind of chaotic pastel rainbow--and yet.

And yet he'd died in the man's arms. They'd spent nights together in the same bed--as friends, sure, his circumstances had been too complicated to consider anything more than that. But you don't share that kind of intimacy with another person and then not feel it when they disappear again. That's the root of the fear he's been refusing to give voice to. He knows how the Dreaming works here now, nevermind that Dreaming should never be something that a dwarf is capable of. Is it possible that the Medicine Seller is just... gone, and that Kit is now completely alone in this foreign, alien place?

It's late one night and his dreams--yes, he has those now--keep bringing him back to the moment of his death in Darktown. The visceral realness of it makes a decent night's sleep beyond impossible, and so while endeavouring not to wake up his roommates, he gathers up his coat, his cigarettes, and his drowsily waking bibiru, and heads just outside the lodgings for a smoke.

It takes him a minute to get the cigarette lit; his hands keep shaking.

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Valdis still hadn't taken the chance at transforming herself, concerned about how people would react if they saw the large, black hound she could become. Nonetheless, she felt the urge to move, and the beach seemed just as good a place as any to stretch her human legs at least. She had other motives as well, such as summoning her ka to the life plane. The Void hadn't seen fit to interfere with her again, but seeing as she hadn't called Hila for so many years, it seemed prudent to at least talk to the part of her soul that manifested as a mirror of herself.

The large, white wolf appeared without her armor, and while Valdis could sense her relief, Hila didn't appear to be in the mood for conversation. The wolf curled up beneath the shade of a tree, Valdis leaning against her side, reading over the laws provided by the Sentry. She looked up when she heard Kit's voice, the two of them hadn't interacted much since the somewhat awkward meeting when they had first arrived. Hila lifted her head as well, eyeing the small bibiru as it hopped along the shore, squeaking at the dwarf as he waded in the water.

Without saying a word to Valdis, Hila rose and headed toward the water, luckily Valdis sensed her shift and wasn't surprised by the sudden lack of support behind her.

"Leave the bibiru alone, Hila," she said, sounding almost bored."

"Leave the bibiru alone, Hila."

Kit glances up from his examination of a curiously shaped seashell to spot the approach of the large white wolf, and looks with immediate alarm to his bibiru, which has grown rigid with fright on the shoreline. "Ah, shit," he mumbles, straightens up, and quickly strides across the sand to scoop the little animal up either before it wets itself or becomes a meal for the large predator.

He looks from the wolf--she's beautiful, even if she is a legitimate threat to his little companion--and then beyond her to Valdis, whom he recognizes even if they haven't spoken much. He attempts an awkward kind of smile. "Is, uh. Is she yours?" he calls out, though his eyes remain on Hila.

Valdis set the book down with the rest of her things, rising to follow her ka even as the dwarf scooped up the bibiru. Hila paused in her approach, waiting for Valdis to catch up.

"In a manner of speaking." She didn't particularly feel like trying to explain what Hila was right now, Bakura was far better at it anyway.

I mean no harm to the creature, Hila adds gently, I just wish to see.

...huh. That was--that was definitely unusual.

"Look, um," he begins, gestures with one hand, then scratches his beard, the side of his neck, "this is probably going to sound like a crazy question, but--did your wolf just talk to me? Inside my head?"

Cheep, goes the bibiru. A very useful contribution to the conversation.

Valdis looked at Hila, who very much wanted to get closer to the bibiru, though the ka was apparently aware that getting closer might frighten the small animal. She stroked the wolf's neck.

"Yes, I apologize, sometimes I forget that people aren't used to that." Valdis admitted, "Hila isn't a wolf, not really anyway...Do you think your bibiru would be alright if she got a little closer?"

"Yes, I apologize, sometimes I forget that people aren't used to that."

No shit, a part of him wants to say, but he keeps that part of himself damn quiet lest he chase off some of the only real company he's attracted since arriving here. Instead, he focuses on her last question, and with an uneasy look Hila's way, he shifts his attention to the bibiru in his arms. The little thing seems less frightened now that it's protected by the security of Kit's (seriously ripped a f) biceps, and is now extending out its little head, perking up its ears, to sniff in Hila's direction.

"...we can give it a shot, sure," he decides, cracks a nervous smile, and then looks to Hila. "Just, you know. Try not to spook 'im too much. If he takes off running here I have no idea if I'll catch him again."

Hila lowered herself to the ground, crawling forward to appear less threatening, nose outstretched to sniff the small creature. Valdis' gaze moved from her friend to her roommate.

"I also apologize about my behavior before, I wasn't exactly thrilled to be here."

Nothing quite as wrenching as being prepared to die and waking up still alive, morbid as that might be.

Still cautious, Kit nevertheless doesn't stop the bibiru as it wiggles free from his arms and hops to the ground. It takes a few little loping paces closer to Hila and touches its nose to hers. Sniff. sniff sniff.

"I also apologize about my behavior before, I wasn't exactly thrilled to be here."

Halfway through her apology, Kit is already offering her an easier, lopsided smile, and shaking his head. "Nah," he says at length, "don't worry about it. To tell you the truth, I wasn't either." He glances towards Hila and the bibiru to make sure they're still playing nice, his little smile fading. "...Guess I'm still not sure what I'm doing here."

Valdis offered a small smile, turning her gaze to Hila and the bibiru as they sniffed noses.

"Well, the first time I was summoned to help defeat a world devouring demon, not so sure why I'm here this time around." She shrugged, "Guess I'll have to wait a little longer to discover my fate on my home world."

Not that she was in any hurry now. Aifaran was more vibrant than Keeliai was at the end, filled with new opportunities if she just looked. It carried many new problems with it, but she had confidence that she could face whatever was thrown at her.

It suddenly is much easier to just leave his eyes on the bibiru and Hila, rather than look back at Valdis. Kit's lips twist in a grimace. "I already know mine," he admits in a tone of voice that conveys plenty on its own: like so many others, he was pulled from his own world at the point of his death. "There's nothing for me back there anymore."

"I would think that one who has been touched by death would see more opportunity in having another life."

A quiet, not quite joyful laugh followed her words. Hila shot her a brief glance, checking in before returning her attention to the bibiru. Valdis' gaze dropped to watch the pair, trying to ignore the hypocrisy in her own statement. What had happened to Jackie, and apparently Kit, had little similarities with her own situation. Yet for them, death was far more traumatic. Most people had the luxury of only dying once.

Ironically, this was Kit's second death. The first one was just figurative.

"Yeah, well," he begins, chuckling a little grimly, "when you're part of something called the Legion of the Dead, you don't--" an idle, somewhat futile hand gesture, "--really know what to do with life. I guess that was my problem from the beginning, to be honest."

"Maybe that's why you are here," Valdis offered, "Now you have the chance."

It was perhaps easier to value life when one also possessed mortality. Valdis supposed she would simply have to find the silver lining again.

"You already have a pet," she said of the bibiru, "I'm sure that will help."

"You already have a pet. I'm sure that will help."

That gets a laugh out of him, but it's an affable-sounding one, followed by a smile. "Yeah," he agrees, watching the bibiru as it starts to nibble on some tall grass, its curiosity with Hila satisfied. "Probably better to try to look after a little guy like that than something like your wolf there."

Hila glanced over her shoulder at Valdis the same instant Valdis' gaze dropped to hers, then they both looked at Kit.

"Hila isn't a pet," Valdis clarified, though she sounded hesitant, "She's...part of my soul."

In response to this revelation, Kit responds in the only way that's appropriate and says, "Shit, I'm sorry." Because he is.

He's also, understandably, completely out of his element and bewildered by how a piece of the soul can be on the outside of one's body, and also, inexplicably, a white wolf.

Chagrined, he glances Hila's way next. "Sorry," he adds to her, too, because that seems... sort of like a thing he should be doing right now. "That's--that's definitely not how things work where I'm from, I never would've thought--" Stop talking, you're making it worse. He rubs the back of his neck. "...I really am sorry."

"It's not really how things work where I'm from either," Valdis admitted, "I learned how to summon her from...a friend."

At least that's what she thought Bakura was. He wasn't an enemy at any rate. Hila curled her lip at the thought of Bakura, but did not comment on it.

"I'm not really sure how to explain it."

And she definitely wasn't going to explain how the rest of her magic involved souls.

"It's nothing to be sorry about, we aren't offended."

"I'm not really sure how to explain it."

Already Kit feels like he's well and truly stepped in it with this turn in the conversation, and he gives his hand a quick wave as though to dismiss the idea completely. "Really, you don't have to," he tells her and Hila both, looking from one to the other with chagrin still clear on his face.

Valdis almost laughed at how flustered this particular realization has made the dwarf. Hila has no qualms about it, so her laughter rang clear in both their heads.

“There are many kinds of magic in this world, sir dwarf,” Valdis added, “You may run into stranger things at some point.”

"Seems likely," Kit agrees grimly, and looks for all the world like this possibility is something he dreads more than looks forward to. He shakes his head and chafes a hand against his beard. "I'm already living it, anyway. Dwarves where I come from, we don't... do... magic. Now I've got this--this thing I can do."

"Magic has pros and cons in every world," She replied, glancing at Hila, who was still watching the bibiru with interest.

"In my world, magic is unique to race. For instance, humans don't have any, but they aren't exactly aware of its existence either."

Kei's teleported to the beach again, but this time shows up further up the shoreline. Though he's close enough that he might've been seen, he doesn't immediately notice that Kit's there, approaching the surf and crouching down to dip his fingers in the oncoming waves.

Kit does notice Kei blip into existence further down the beach, but isn't quite so startled by it this time. It still weirds him out, these strange new abilities and how they manifest here in Konryu, but after two months, he's getting better at managing his reactions to it.

He slips another interesting-looking shell into his pocket, straightens up, and lets his wandering take him further down the beach towards Kei. "Looks like you like it out here too," he calls out once he's near enough, smiling lopsidedly. Beside him on the beach, he continues to be shadowed by his bibiru, who now perks up its little ears at Kei curiously.

There are only so many places to go, and this is one of the nicer areas Kei's found, not least because of the relative isolation. The water's a pleasant enough temperature today, and Kei lets it lap over his fingers.

Hearing someone call out to him, he turns his head to look. Lost in thought as he'd been, it takes a moment to recognize Kit, but then he smiles back. "I didn't expect to see you two out here again."

"Really?" This said with raised eyebrows and an incredulous chuckle. He looks out across the water, squinting some, and lifts a hand to shade his eyes from the sun. "I'd stay out here all day if I could get away with it. Plenty of sunshine, the water's warm--what's not to like?"

"True, it's very nice out here. I meant more the chances of meeting you again along the same stretch of beach." Kei straightens up, shaking the ocean water off his hand.

"How has your friend been doing?" He looks at the bibiru, then back at Kit. Last he saw of the bibiru, it was unhappy post-bath.

Following his line of sight to the bibiru, Kit finds his little companion sitting on the sand continuing to watch him with small, animal-like concern. Kit grins lopsidedly at it. "Ah, he's doing all right," he replies, and takes a few careful steps out of the water so it's agitated shivering will stop. (It works; the bibiru seems to find its chill once Kit is no longer in the surf.)

He crouches down to scoop it up into his arm and tucks it into a satchel that he's got slung over his shoulder, which seems to have been jerry-rigged for the sole purpose of carrying the bibiru around with him. "I think it's a 'he' anyway. Damn hard to tell with all that fluff." He looks back to Kei and gives his new friend a curious, searching kind of look. "How've you been, anyway?"

Without the shard in his hand keeping him bound to one general area, the Medicine Seller did what he did best -

- wander off to sell medicine.

He'd pop up every now and then, usually after weeks had passed, but for the most part he found he could return to the schedule he was far more used to.

That is to say, he didn't really keep any sort of schedule to speak of.

There was something that kept him from completely disappearing into the crowds, however, and that was a strange and almost impossible miracle.

"Once someone has died," he said offhandedly, seated on a wall and smoking his own pipe as he regarded Kit with a mixture of perplexed fondness, "it is usually a little while before I run into them again."

Nevermind lighting his cigarette, he drops the damn thing--and the lighter--before that can happen.

Not keen to start a fire, he quickly crouches to snatch up the lighter and switch it off, pocketing it, then turns quickly to follow the sound of that familiar voice. He looks to the side, and then up, and there he is, looking untouched by his journey from Thedas to Konryu. For a few moments, Kit just stares at him in baffled silence.

Then a broken sort of laugh comes out of him. He chafes a hand against his beard. "Yeah, well." He clears his throat and searches for his composure in the face of this reunion. "Guess I'm just special that way."

"Special indeed," he remarked.

That seemed to be all he had to say for a time, but the Medicine Seller's habit of drifting into silence for long periods should probably be familiar to Kit by now. Words were always considered, weighed carefully as if they were made of something precious.

You died, he thought, You died and I could not get the smell of your blood out of my nose for weeks and worst of all it hurt.

His gaze lingered on Kit for a time, before eventually wandering to the boughs of a diminished looking tree. They never grew so well in cities.

"Sleep eludes you, it seems."

Someone ought to encourage him to say more words out loud, though it's true that Kit had grown accustomed to the Medicine Seller's long silences months ago. He'd chalked them up to the strange elf's alien nature as a rifter; it has been weird, but not weird enough to keep him out of Kit's bed.

He'd be lying if he said he hasn't missed that, too.

"Sleep eludes you, it seems."

"I could say the same for you," Kit replies, watching him as he watches the trees. The familiar strangeness of him makes his heart ache unexpectedly. He cracks a lopsided smile. "You always kept odd hours, though."

A pause, and then, "You gonna come down from there, or should I go up to you?"

Bakura hasn't really found his stride yet in Aifaran, insofar as something to regularly occupy his time. He's been helping out at the Dreaming Bridge off and on, mostly down in the cafeteria kitchen where people don't have much reason to linger, and avoided finding something longer term for a job.

Staring at the ocean is as good a way to slide away the hours, in any case, sitting up on one of the larger rocks away from the spray from the surf. A few feet away, Diabound is pretzeled into a ball of shining white scales and feathers, soaking up the warm sunlight of the day.

Noting a familiar face from the festival the month prior, Bakura's greeting is mild, more teasing than mockery. "You adopted a mother hen, I see."

"You adopted a mother hen, I see."

Kit doesn't seem to hear the voice that speaks to him at first--or rather, he hears something, but it's come at him from the left. He's deaf in that ear.

He pushes himself up to his feet and turns around, frowning to himself, then spots Bakura on his perch. He squints at first, lifting up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun to get a better look at the visitor--then he chuckles, a lopsided smile settling onto his face. "Hey," he calls out. "You taking in the sea breeze up there?" The bibiru hops a few paces nearer and stands up onto its haunches, sniffing in Bakura's direction.

"Something like that," Bakura replies, adjusting his volume when he realized Kit had not clearly heard him the first time. "The city only holds so much charm."

He's brought a bag, half open on the rock next to him. Perhaps the bibiru smelled some of the food inside.

Sniff sniff. A few hops closer; yes, it does appear the little bibiru is on the hunt. The forage. Whatever.

Kit watches its pursuit with amused eyes, affectionately baffled by the little creature that has come under his care since his arrival here. He glances back at Bakura and then snorts, his expression easy to read: he agrees. "Yeah," he says, coming a few steps closer, and reaches into his pocket to fetch out a cigarette and a lighter, "I'm not the city's biggest fan, I'll admit." Or the Sentry's, he could have added, but he doesn't. Not yet.

As the bibiru gets closer, Diabound raised its head, tongue flicking out in the other creature's direction, but it made no effort to uncoil.

Bakura motions that Kit can join him on the rock if he wishes; it's wide enough for both and then some. "Want a drink?"

Abruptly, Kit flashes Bakura a much more easy going grin and chuckles. "Now you're talking," he replies wryly, and ambles nearer to hoist himself up onto the rock. "What're you drinking?"

The bibiru, spotting Diabound, stops short and gives another agitated sniff, its ears wavering. Kit leans his head around to give the... snake..? a wary glance. "Hope your friend there isn't looking for a snack," he says, and while he's mostly joking, he also isn't. (...Please don't eat his bibiru, it's his only friend here.)

"There's water in the bottles," Bakura says, handing him the bag, and they're capped tightly to prevent from spilling on the other contents within, including a slim journal. "And something considerably stronger in the flask, if that's what you prefer." A red-amber liquid that tasted like spice and sky, and potent enough to satisfy most needs. Bakura hadn't partaken much of it, preferring the water most of the time, but the container's not entirely full either.

"That's Diabound," the thief replied, and the winged serpent raises its head at being addressed. "He won't hurt your pet. He just enjoys attention, and his patches of sun."

(Master and ka weren't so different in that.)

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[OPEN] finding his feet

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