On the road
11 Gingemes, 333
Fate
Perkunas has drawn back to the horizon for the time being (plotting his next course) as Saulė rouses from her long slumber and stretches her radiance through the reaching, fuzzy fingers of the pines and spruces. Throughout the day, as the carts trundle along, all of the travelers find some way or other revel in this reprieve from the gray and wet, from going out of their way to eating or resting in sunlit clearings to roving out as far towards open spaces as they dared. There is no shortage of clothing, either, stretched out on every surface that is open to the air to dry.
(As a result, a great deal of traders are wearing somewhat less clothing than they might otherwise in less familiar company. Kelly is among them, unfazed, enjoying the sun on his skin.)
It is thus that Janin sits atop the cart, cross-legged, stooped over a sheet of paper with a quill in hand and a crease in his brow. Light and shadow cross over him as the cart moves.
In the distance, Aaren's singing can be heard. (It's a busy day—as it ever is for her.)
Slavina
Slavina sits nearby, on top of the cart's awning-leaf. She's still got on her wreaths and head-covering, but everything else is pinned over the side of the awning to finally dry out. She has her hands pressed over her eyes and feet tucked up like a bow as she works on her daily 'listening to the goddess' practice, swaying gently in time to the motion of the cart.
After basically forever (totally forever man), she runs her hands back over her head and rolls her shoulders back. Slavina looks over at Janin. "How's your letter coming?"
(To Fate) Slavina's totes reading over his shoulder. What's it say?
Fate
(To Slavina)
"Dear Mom and Dad,
I didn't tell you this sooner because I didn't want to concern you. Aaren said that she'd never done this sort of thing on people before, which was a pretty scary thing for me to hear, but I went ahead and went through with it anyway. But it worked.
So... I have not to be vulgar or anything, but I can get my body matches my
I know there was a part of you that never believed I was your son. I know you tried to respect me, but I could see that you basically felt like I was lying. But I wasn't and now
Your daughter's dead."
Daina
Daina has most of her stuff drying, wearing basically a tube top and fresh underwear the rest of her stuff laid out and drying, held in place with some washed rocks. She's been walking along by the wagon for a while and now hops up to climb upwards and her curly head peeks over the edge. "Hi" she greets as she clambers up and sits on the edge careful to give much personal space. Watching and trying to tell if she's intruding.
Slavina
Slavina scoots towards the center of the cart by half an arm's length so Daina has room to sit somewhere.
Fate
Janin is silent for a long moment, staring hard at his letter as if his gaze would peel back the part of what he had written so far that was hiding the presence of the actually correct words. And then he sighs deeply, lifting his gaze, his demeanor easing.
It's another moment before the spoken words around him catch up to him. And then he says, "I dunno." He looks back down at the sheet for a bit, his eyes flicking, and then adds, "Hi, Daina."
Daina
Daina scoots enough to be more securely seated "writing letters home?" she questions with a light tone that allows for a refusal to respond. She leans back on her hands and looks upwards, her eyes closed and feeling the warmth on her face, soaking up the Warmth.
Fate
"Maybe," Janin says. His eyes stop flicking. He crumples the sheet up. "Or maybe I'll just never go home ever again."
Daina
Daina looks over with some worry. "You... didn't like home or... are they gonna... ya know loose their shit?" Gesturing up and down with one hand.
Slavina
Slavina leans over Janin's shoulder as she scans the paper, lips moving silently as she reads it and then tracking the arc of the crumpled page. She shifts so she's facing him and starts gently combing his hair with her fingers. "You went home last time," she points out, voice low and soothing, "and this is nowhere near as bad, right?"
Fate
Janin turns his head to the side. "I don't know," he says, in answer to Daina's question. And then his mouth twitches a little. "No. This is pretty much exactly the same. Worse, maybe. The first time I did it, it was an accident brought on by negligence." He laughs, a sound which is weary and bitter and not at all light with humor. It cuts off quickly in favor of a hard swallow. "Maybe by having me do this all over again La Dama is telling me that I made the wrong choice the first time. To go back and face them, I mean. Or maybe I should just stop killing my parents' children."
Daina
Daina's brow furrows a little and she's quiet not knowing quite what to say. She didn't know about a death or how happened... any of that so she really wasn't in much a place to speak on it. Though she then frowns "You... do you think your being a boy now killed who you were?" drawing some threads together but maybe not the right ones. She asks it quietly with a great bit of uncertainty.
Fate
Janin tightens, and the muscles in his jaw flex a little before he speaks. "No. I was always a boy." This is spoken firmly, angrily, even. But then he takes a moment, takes a deep breath, and then says, "I just... was never their son. And when I come back, I'll be a stranger."
Daina
Daina winces and glances away "Oh ...sorry" she mumbles a bit "Just figured it'd be that..."
Slavina
Slavina plucks a fern-frond from her wrist wreath and twists it into his hair, behind his ear. "It's not your fault they were putting wreaths on the wrong altar."
Fate
Janin sighs. "I'm sorry, Daina. I'm not angry at you. I'm... I'm just angry." But then Slavina speaks. His brow crunches and he says, "But it'll be my fault when they see that the altar was wrong. And fault or no fault, all that... wreathing, or whatever... will be pretty much pointless. It mattered to them, it was right to them, and now I'm taking all that—all nineteen years of it—away."
Daina
Daina makes a small tightening of her lips that indicates she's heard Janin and she then falls silent for the time being.
Slavina
"Okay." Slavina says. She's quiet for a little bit after that, then says, still quiet, "So to make up for robbing them of their illusory daughter, you're going to deprive them of the chance to know their real son?"
Fate
For a moment he can't breathe. His gut goes hard. And then he takes in a breath, rubbing a hand over his mouth as if thoughtfully considering this, although his brow is too troubled and the lines around his eyes too tight to give him the requisite disinterested but curious expression. Then he pulls his hand away and, asks, very quietly, "What if they want their daughter more?"
Slavina
Slavina braces herself for bakersfieldian-directness. "Lots of people want things they can't have." She tucks her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them.
Daina
Daina kinda tilts her head to one side and arches her brows in an expression of... that's true.
Fate
Janin's mouth quivers. He presses it back into a hard, angry frown. But tears leak down his cheeks in spite of him. He turns his face away from Slavina and curls up and hugs his own knees.
The following silence is only broken by a hard sniffle and the sound of cloth shifting as Janin wipes his nose coolly with the back of his hand and returns it to its place.
Slavina
Slavina flounders at that—she pulls herself tighter around her knees and watches Janin, then gives Daina a desperate I-don't-know-what-to-do look.
Daina
Daina looks over with a ...'whyareyoulookingatme' expression and then screws up her face a bit. Scooching over she clears her throat a little. "... so... here's the thing... you... can't control how they'll respond. You can just offer the gift of knowing you... and it's true they might not accept it ... but would you rather not know... just in case ... they might?" she bites her lower lip a moment. "Neither path would be easy no matter what ... but at least if you go forward you'll have made the offer and it's out of your hands... you won't need to... worry... just bandage up the wounds and find your new family..." She falls silent then. One eye closed as she waits for the rebuke of some part of her advice.
Fate
Janin juts his jaw. "I don't want a new family." His voice is even, quiet, fragile. "I want my mom and dad, and Ulikas and Elzie and Vaidasutis." His voice breaks not four words in, giving way to tightly-strung grief. He buries his face in his knees, unwinding his arms just enough to curl his fingers tight in his hair. The quiet all but echoes Slavina's words.
Slavina
Slavina stares at her toes, face blank and half-hidden by the drape of her scarf.
Daina
Daina makes a soft 'heh' sound. "Yeah... I know how you feel... I want ... my past back too." she mumbles with a tightly drawn grief in her own voice as she sits up and scrubs her hands over her face a little. "Problem is I cannot have that."
Fate
There is no response, save his shoulders shaking and the faint, muffled sounds of weeping.
Slavina
Slavina (with an almost audible effort of will) uncurls herself and wraps her arms around Janin, face pressed against his shoulder so her own tears don't show.
Daina
Daina glances to the side and silently slips off the side of the wagon, using vines as footholds before landing quietly and letting the train go along a bit before walking along side.
Fate
Janin unwinds his fingers just long enough to curl them around Slavina's arms as if hanging on for dear life.