On the road
17 Gingemes, 333
Fate
Despite best efforts (short of magical, that is), within just one day everything has been coated in at least a thin sheen of mud and the constant driving rain that seems to leave no crevice untouched. Perkunas's rumbling rolled across the sky throughout the course of the day, lighting up the dark clouds in the distance—the only light, in fact, which was brighter than twilight to have penetrated the thick cover.
Moisture even seems to have seeped into the cart—though warm and well-sealed, the air is still thick with moisture and condensation collects along the cart's walls, enough to drip from the ceiling from time to time. It almost feels sauna-like, except without the sort of cleansing heat that would make it a relaxing experience.
Makeshift shelters have been propped up left and right, and not a single inch of waxed canvas has gone unused. It nearly forms a patchy network of passages between the caravan workers' tents, draped over twine tied between strategically parked carts and little alcoves propped up by pillars grown by Daina, both for people and for Chauncy and the donkeys. It's far from a complete shelter, nor is it the most secure—indeed, just an hour earlier a commotion began when an alcove unexpectedly collapsed on Ilvers, the caravan master, and a few other workers, dumping the collected water on everyone within—but only two more days remain of this so no one is particularly compelled to do better.
The rain patters as ever over evertything, a constant background of white noise which luckily doesn't grow much louder or more insistent throughout the day. Overall, this lends to a mood of general silence, ranging from contemplative to sulky to restless to resigned.
Aaren
Aaren is sitting next to the donkey, Fatina, singing her ankle better. Lightning spikes from cloud to cloud, turning bits of the sky momentarily purple.
Fatina doesn't even twitch. All the animals are used to the thunder. Even the humans had stopped jumping.
Aurika is off somewhere, taking a break from Aaren—So Aaren has a free couple of voices. She'd spent the morning (here, next to the donkey) easing the last of the cold symptoms and shaping the last of the songs to resist yet another version of the nasty little flu tune they were passing around.
Now, Aaren is keeping the donkey dry from the rain that is pattering in through the shelter's open wall. And she is healing the ankle, and keeping muscles strong. And, with four other voices, playing again with the song of wings, trying to make it sound like a functioning bird does.
Fate
The bottle is going around again.
Kelly's opted out enough times for Ilvers's and Esta's hands to cross in front of him, passing the bottle before him. That done, Ilvers takes his card, rises, and slowly, carefully, moves to put another scaffolding on the card tower, now on its fourth level. His eyes narrow and his brow presses. His hand is unsteady. Every last person around the circle holds their breath. Silent. Tense.
It's too much today.
Breathing through his speeding pulse, Kelly rises to slip from the group. This garners some questioning looks from the company, but he simply offers a small, thin smile and a wave and moves out under a passage.
Shouts and groans of playful, drunken disappointment follow him, seizing what feels like his whole body for a moment. Overlapping comments and laughter at the apparently fallen tower free him.
Away. He moves away from all that. Free of the silence, he hums his calm song to himself and just... walks.
Aaren's voices drift over to him. He follows them.
Aaren
Aaren hears the world change. The songs shift, as Kelly notices her and draws closer.
She's almost releived. Without the bird to study, she can only distract herself so long with the wings song.
Her songs lift in quiet welcome to her brother.
Fate
Kelly pauses in his humming long enough to sing a greeting to her in return. Thus invited, he ducks into the alcove which is (not so) strangely free of wet donkey-smell, suffused with the mingled scents of mixed spices and pasted plants and hunkers down next to Aaren on the less active mortar-holding side. He's silent and still for a moment, watching her grinding, listening to her singing, and then shifts to lean lightly against her, head resting on her shoulder.
Aaren
Aaren leans into her brother, automatically. For a moment, she's just there.
But then she streightens (careful not to knock him clear) so that she can put her weight on the griding she is doing.
"Do you want to tell me how you are doing?" She asks, to the quiet tune of the herbs she is crushing.
Her hair is purple today, in long ropy braids. It's pulled back from her shoulders and face, tied up with itself. The noises jingle and clank as she pounds, in time to the song of the donkey, marking each beat of blood through the ankle.
Fate
He thinks for a while, his eyes searching idly around the donkey's ankle.
Then he hums a quiet 'I don't know'. "Anxious, I guess. Kinda tense." He takes his time on the next breath. "Lonely."
Aaren
Aaren frowns. "Missing everyone?" She sings it to the song of their family, gathered around the table and laughing.
She blinks, as her eyes start to sting. Then sits back from her mortar to listen to her own song.
Fate
Kelly shrugs a shoulder. "I'm a hunter." That was something he'd spent four years learning how to deal with. "It's more like everyone here wants to get drunk but me." The words fall from him, a little hollower than expected. There was more, but no more words were offering themselves. He breathes his dissatisfaction for a moment, letting it simmer on its own.
At Aaren's sudden contemplative shift, he straightens a little himself, gaze sliding her way. "You?" He pauses. "You've been pretty busy, off by yourself a lot." It's spoken more like a realization than an observation.
Aaren
Aaren sings ascent. With a song of mild surpise, she sings, "I hadn't realized. I—" Her voice cracks, just a bit, "I sound like I really miss them." The really has it's own tune, sung with another voice. Her song.
Fate
He regards her a moment, around her, and then starts scooting in closer. "You wanna be sad?" It's more of an invitation than a question.
Aaren
Aaren puts down her pestle with a thump and tosses her hair. The noises jingle, clank and clash. "No!" She snorts. "Who has time for that?!"
But she holds out her arms and softens her shoulders, and sings resgined sighing.
Fate
Kelly wordlessly accepts both answers and wraps her up, then begins singing a lead-in to the non-person specific sad song, a repetitive, rhythmic harmony which waits for the melody with as many measures as it needs.
Aaren
Aaren sings along. First the harmony, with Kelly. But then she breaks her voices free. Sings the songs of her mother, and her siblings, her father, Vir—the faces of their village. Twisting and twining with the song of sorrow.
Her eyes blurr, and tears begin to gather unmarked in the corner of her eyes.
Three of her voices stay clear of it, still healing the donkey, lowering swelling, taking away pain.
Aaren sings through the entire village, through Vanya, and on to Boria, and then swells, without thought, into the Tsarbog's song. It sweeps up all her voices with it, as if it it was impossible to sing with less then seven.
Her face twists up, and the tears come out in bursts. Silent sobs twist her mouth into contortions and send her rocking back and forth on her knees—butrussed as she is by Kelly's arms.
But her voice does not faulter or crack.
Fate
Kelly fades his harmony out as Aaren takes the song where she needs it to go, instead tightening his hug and rocking with her, keeping rhythm. The music sweeps him along too on its emotional arc—it's impossible to resist, especially when the notes are very familiar to him and conjure up vivid images—but his own tears come quiet and docile, leaving him unwracked.
Aaren
The song goes on for perhaps three minutes, full and loud, her voices swelling and falling and sweeping and shifting—And then Aaren faulters to a stop, and into silence.
She tries again, lifting her voices, lifting her face, as if that would help. As if the sky is hiding some secret she would be able to see through her eyelids.
But a few moments later she faulters to a hault again.
Aaren buries her head in Kelly's shoulder and begins to sob adably, great, hiccoping whinning sobs. "It won't sound right." She manages, after a few tries. "It doesn't sound like her."
Fate
He shifts his hand to the back of her head, making the hug encompass her a little more. "What if you told stories about her instead?" It's a suggestion offered tentatively, with every bit the uncertainty of a 16-year-old who's aware of his inexpertise. "That's what the older hunters do at the lodge."
Aaren
Aaren just cries, shaking her head helplessly.
After a few moments, her sobs calm. She wipes her eyes, and turns her voices back to the donkey-work. (The donkey began lowing softly a few moments after she'd lost focus on her, as the pain had returned.)
"I don't know." She finally sings. "If Aya was here we could do the whole rock-opera." She sniffs.
Fate
"I could go get Slavina." He hesitates. "She's heard it, right?"
Aaren
Aaren smiles, and sniffs again. "I have no idea." She sings, to a tune of drained out sorrow. "It's alright, I don't think it would actully make a differnce. I mean, the sharing is the important part, right?"
Fate
Kelly shrugs. "I think so." He offers a little wan smile. "You're the priest." It's a mild statement, good-humored, almost joke-like.
Aaren
Aaren pushes him over and starts pretending to eat his belly. "You little munchkin!" She sings, to the teasing-outrage.
Fate
Laughter catches him by surprise and he works to wriggle his way into an advantageous wrestling position to flip her over.
Aaren
Kelly has, at some mysterious point in the last ten years, gotten stronger then Aaren, and while she still has the height advantage, that's not much use when they're already in the mud. In a few moments Aaren is on her back, laughing, flailing her arms and legs.
After a moment she quiets, and then sits up. "Okay." She sings. "I'll tell you a story, and then you can hug me while I cry, and then we can talk more about how you're doing, okay?"
Fate
He finishes un-pinning her all the way and then sings his affirmative song as he settles back in, wiping mud off his face.
Aaren
Aaren settles in, and then hums in thought for a while, and then tells the story about the Tsarbog's favorite horse—the silly one with the brown spot.
She doesn't cry the whole way through, even at the bits where the story requires the gentle echo of the Tsarbog's quiet pleasure. Then at the end she starts sobbing again.
Fate
As promised, Kelly hugs her again. His is a bit more of a comfortable shoulder now that he's lost half his little noises in card games. (Naturally, most of them presently belong to Esta.)
Aaren
Aaren takes the hug. Her sobs die out eventually, and the sound of the rain rolls back in under the gentle donkey music.
After a while Aaren streightens. She casts around for a moment until she's put her motar and pestial back to rights, and then gets back to work. "Thanks, Kelly."
Fate
He hums the 'don't mention it' measure before unwrapping himself slowly and opening his hands her way some. "I can do that for you, if you want."
Aaren
Aaren hands the herbs over. Then, her hands suddenly free, she pets the donkey.
"Did you have more to say about feeling isolated?" She asks, to a song of gentle caring.
Fate
Kelly sets to it, falling into a concentrated silence until the rhythm goes steady. "Maybe." Then he takes a few more moments to consider.
"I guess I'm still hurt?" His brow crinkles a little. "It's just hard when everyone's happy and having a good time. I want to be happy with them but I'm not. They make it seem like it should be easy." He presses a corner of his mouth out. "It probably helps that they're drunk. But they aren't always." He lifts his chin a little, letting his eyes roam for a bit. "Esta's good at it. She has nightmares too. And she gets anxious kinda like I do. But she can have a good time anyway." He looks back to the mortar. "But even when I'm on a walk with Aurika it's still sometimes lonely. So... I dunno."
Aaren
Aaren rests her head on his shoulder. "It makes sense to me." She sings, slow and quiet. "You were all alone when they were hurting you. How can people be with you now, if you're still hurting?"
Fate
The words work their way through him slowly as he watches the churn and crush of herbs for a while. "I don't understand why they did it." No tears wait this time, but the hurt still comes raw through his voice. "What did they want from me? Did I... did I hurt the guard too much? Was it, like, revenge? Or were they trying to stop me? It doesn't make any sense. They could've just tied me up or... or something."
Aaren
Aaren sings her own greif song, and the song of restless, endless questioning—not quite in tune with Kelly, so that he can hear it and notice it, without it growing on him.
With another voice she sings her agreement, and her steadfast waiting at his side.
Fate
His questioning trails off as she sings, still unsatisfied—endless indeed. He takes a moment to set the mortar and pestle in his lap and rub his knees, probing them with his fingers just to remind himself of their wholeness.
"Am I..." A pause. "Can I even be... worthy enough for this journey?"
Aaren
Aaren's hands lay still in her lap. She frowns, thinking. After a long pause, she sings, to dad's song, "I think we may need to talk about what 'worthy' means first. Do you mean, can you be useful? Or are you speaking of the aspect of the journey that is our spiritual quest and are wondering if you are, I don't know, god-watched enough?"
Fate
Kelly shrugs again. "I guess the second thing. That sounds... more important." He searches for more helpful words. "I suppose I just don't want to be a liability. Like a baby on a patrol. Or pointless."
Aaren
"Hmm." Aaren sings. She thinks some more. "Well, I have no idea if you're worthy in the spiritual-quest since, since I have no idea whose judging that and using what criteria." She picks up her hands and tosses her hair back, undoing that knot that's kept it out of the way.
"As to being a liability, or a baby, or pointless, well. I'm glad you're here. I take great comfort from your presence." She narrows her eyes for a moment. "I was going to list more things I appreicate about you being around. Do you think that would actually help? Is this a listening time?"
Fate
A third shrug. "Maybe it'll help. But maybe it'll make me feel worse. I mean... Daina tried." He tilts his head and presses his mouth out. "It wasn't her fault. She said I'm brave and told me brave things I did. That sounds like a nice thing, I guess. But it made me feel more stupid than anything else."
Aaren
Aaren laughed. "Yeah, I can see why. Brave and stupid sometimes look a lot a like." She starts curling her braids into flowers, noises hanging all around the edges.
"I think it's a listening time." She sings, after a moment. "Why are you feeling like you are inadiquite?"
Fate
Kelly takes up the mortar and pestle again, thinking on it some more. "I got captured really easy. And it was really easy to... break me, I guess. I couldn't do anything to stop them, and I couldn't even move afterwards. They could've done more to me." These words roll through him easily this time, the roads they traverse now well-packed. "Daina, Slavina, and Esta had to come get me. If I hadn't come with you guys that wouldn't have been a problem." He grinds for a little while longer, the hollow sound of stone scraping stone filling the gap. "More than that, I was... pretty helpless in Bakersfield. It was... so much. I couldn't concentrate on anything, couldn't quite figure out what to be alert for. I can't really think of any point where me being around made much of a difference, to be honest." His voice is quiet, almost small, but measured and even.
Aaren
"Were you expecting to never have anything bad happen to the group because of you?" Aaren asks, to the song of intense listening.
Fate
The question pulls him up short for a moment. "I didn't know what to expect." He sighs. "But staying out of trouble isn't that hard." He lets out a humorless breath of a laugh. "I've even had practice."
Aaren
"Hmm." Aaren sings. "It sounds kind of like you were expecting already be master of the situations out here—like you are at home, I mean. Does that sound, like how you were feeling?"
Fate
He considers this for a while, then settles on, "I guess..."
Aaren
Aaren waits.
Fate
The quiet in the conversation stretches on for a while, punctuated by the rhythmic tapping of the pestle. One corner of his mouth comes up, not convicted enough to be a sneer.
"Well. I feel pretty stupid now."
Aaren
Aaren puts her hands back in her lap. "I felt the same way the first time we came to Bakersfield. Bozhdar and Momochka both told me I was going to be overwhelmed, and that I should expect to be pretty useless for the first few days. I was still mad and, really, really ashamed when I had to hide in the carts."
Fate
Kelly lets her words seep into him for a while. "But you managed not to get into trouble." He pauses, then corrects himself. "I guess Daina got in trouble, though."
Aaren
Aaren opens her mouth. She shuts her mouth. She opens it again, "Well, I wasn't going to say that..." Then she snickers.
"Besides." She adds, after a moment, "I did, just not big world shattering trouble. Didn't I tell you about the first time I ran into a drug addiction?"
Fate
He sends a puzzled and look her way, humming an inquisitive song half-consciously.
Aaren
"Oh boy." Aaren heaves a sigh, which spins out into a song. Then she tells about her first days working in the clinic in the outer ring.
Basically, she healed a bunch of people of their drug addictions. Ten of them were back the next day, dying of overdoses. She fixed that too, of course—but it was three days before she realized that she was lowering people's tolerance for the drug at the same time...
And then there were the long, horrible conversations with the staff about the uselessness of healing addictions when most of the people she'd cured were just going to go back to the same situations and do the same thing over.
And then she had people who followed her into the next ring to get their addiction fixed multiple times...
Just lots of messess, all over the place.
Fate
Kelly listens, and, in the middle of the story when the blending is done, sets the mortar and pestle down at Aaren's knees and takes the opportunity to lean against his big sister again. When the tale is finished, he says, "Thanks. I feel less stupid." He thinks for a moment. "But... I also feel like I understand less. Why would someone get healed and then go and hurt themself in the exact same ways again?"
Aaren
Aaren throws her arms up in the air, her songs rolling in that endless questioning, in that specail anxiety by not understanding something that's looming their waiting to hurt you.
Then she sigh-sings again and drops her arms around her brother.
"I don't know. Depends, I guess. Because they were using it to help them with something, and they still needed help with that more then they needed to not be sick." A pause, "Like Aunt Harley and being angry. For a long time she was using her anger to help her surivive and feel okay and stuff. If I'd somehow made it so she wasn't mad, she'd just fall right back into using it."
Fate
He absorbs this in his usual quiet way. "How do you even learn all this stuff? Dad wasn't even there." It's a mild question, but moreso a mild complaint. (People are hard without Dad-magic. This is accepted Arechavaleta wisdom.)
Aaren
"Well, I asked dad about it when we got back, obviously." Aaren giggles.
Fate
This gets a chuckle from Kelly. "Good thing we send letters now. I don't think I could wait that long." He pauses. "So what do you think Dad's talking Mom into doing with Dragomir? You know, instead of tearing him a new one like she's been dying to."
Aaren
"Tying him up over the lake and dropping him in repeatedly?" Aaren suggests, teasing. Then she sings, "I have no idea. Probably talk to him about his feelings."
Fate
He smirks and sings a strain of Dad's song, to indicate that it sounds about right.
Then he settles again, quiet, letting the emotions from the past hour or so diffuse to begin to move on their way.
After a while he disengages from Aaren to take a more focused effort in assisting her with the donkey, carrying them through much of the rest of the long day.