RP:Back~
Cerulean Flowers
In this newly discovered section of the Frostmaw mines, mist and fog forms as it is much warmer than the area around it. The environment in here could be compared to that of a sauna, as your skin begins to collect particles of water upon it from the dense humidity. Fauna grows wild here, though it is of a single variety: cerulean flowers with three petals each. It is a mystery as to how these flowers got here, or how they thrive in such harsh conditions. But, nonetheless, they are here, and they are flourishing in this outcropping from the mines.
Lita was sure she would freeze to death before getting out of Frostmaw. She hated this place. She hated the snow, the cold, the wind. Well, that was a lie. She loved its beauty in secret. She wore her new coat, dark blue and lined with fur. It was longer that her dress and the hem fell just below her knees to almost meet the tops of her black boots. She'd bought them just for the snow. And she hated them, too. She missed being barefoot. She missed the warm weather of spring and summer. She sighed for the umpteenth time, as one so often did when missing things they could not have. She held little patience for anything other than her work these days... She hadn't been paying much attention and had found herself here, drawn by the shelter of the mines and the strange scent of new flowers. She'd never seen them before, or perhaps just never noticed? She bent to pick one, fingers stroking a single velvet petal before she'd steal it from its home. She twirled it betwixt slender digits, watched its color blur into motion and smiled softly. Such a simple thing. And suddenly she didn't mind being lost so much.
It was likely he'd be heard before he was seen. Throughout the mines one voice echoed and sparked alone, speaking only in single words, tones crackling with the same raw magic that filled the air. It was something thick and cloying in the throat when inhaled, and it filled his own heaving lungs with every needless breath inwards. The cavern trembled; he threw out an arm and a sliver of glimmering ruby shot through the air as directed by his hand. But Kirien's movements faltered, or perhaps his concentration did, and the ruby that had transformed itself into the likeness of a broadsword hit the cave wall and shattered without warning in a small explosion of gemstone shards. Red glimmers decorated blue flowers and glistened in the air as the vampire sank to his knees and exhaled a heavy sigh, his gaze directed downwards at the plant life growing around him even as Lita entered the warmed cavern. He was a little unkempt, looked a bit exhausted to be honest, his hair a mess and two long slashes carved horizontally and diagonally across his chest; fresh wounds. Only after taking a moment or two to catch his breath and raise his head some did Kirien look the woman's way, raising a hand in what might almost have been a wave before he seemed to silently decide against it and scruffled up his hair instead. "…Aight."
Lita blinked at the man. A face and name she knew and yet a stranger still in his own right. She'd met him a few times but it seemed now to be such a long time ago. He looked different. Tired. Not quite defeated. She couldn't find the right word. The flower stilled between her fingers and she raised a brow at sight of the shattering gemstone-sword-thing. Her eyes closed and head turned away at the sight, breath held. She let a moment pass before she'd turn to look again, a scattering of brilliance across those strange flowers, doplets of blood backwashed by a sea too calm. She almost smiled. And then she placed it. That skill. Kirien used to sit in that tavern and stare at things. He could do funny things with matter. Turn things into what they weren't. She had a swift memory of a stone cactus turning to the shape of a ship. And what a weird thing that was. She shook her head, as if to rid the memory its foothold in her brain, and ebon curls splashed against her temples. She ventured closer to the familiar stranger, her curiosity always winning in the end. But she took only a few steps, encouraged perhaps by that slight wave, before he was deciding against the gesture and so her steps stilled, leaving only silence to echo between them. She bent and scooped up a handful of the ruby shards, the gemstone fragments bright against her pale skin. She stared down at them, turned her hand this way and that in slow movements so they would refract the fading light and sparkle. She almost smiled, but the shadow flickered from her lips too quickly. "It's broken." She whispered, as if that weren't such an obvious thing. And as she lifted her gaze to seek his, there was a silent question there: Who will fix it?
Kirien recognised her, now he paid more attention to her feel. Ace. It was the only moniker he knew her by as he'd heard Hanan speak the name when referring to her so many times, but he forced himself not to think of the captain or the situations he'd met her in almost every time. Rynvale, most days. Rynvale, the home he'd ran away from and where this brief ghost of his past had surely travelled from to end up in the wastes of Frostmaw with him. Journeying across the sea, across all Hollow-- why was she here? There were questions in his throat but Kirien could not quite find it within himself to voice any of them and thus the silence grew between them and stretched, like that ruby he'd wrenched out of shape before he ruined it. Eventually Lita's movements provoked reaction from him and when she spoke the empath allowed his gaze to drift blindly upward from the shards of ruby in her hand to her eyes. He saw nothing, but he felt something there. Memories, maybe. A pause followed before he finally found his words to answer that silent question hiding in her remark, "I can fix it." In her hands, those broken pieces shifted and shuddered, dragging lightly across pale palms as they began to spin; and as they spun, they began to meld back together, twisting until each shard had knitted itself in with the next and it all eventually took the form of a flower in her hand. Identical to the blue ones carpeting the cavern, only crafted of ruby, it glimmered in the half-light. Something simple, and unassuming.
Lita watched Kirien closely, searching for something. Answers, maybe. She was glad he didn't ask why she'd come. She hadn't yet figured that out yet. She'd originally told herself that she was coming because she'd never been before. It was that damned curiosity in her. She couldn't quiet it. But even so, that would have been a lie. Not that she wasn't used to telling those. But if she were honest, which could never happen, she might let herself understand that in some way she'd come for her Fox. The woman hadn't asked her to come. She hadn't even said much other than simply, 'Kirien left'. And Lita had seen that in her Fox, that hole that had been left by his loss of presence. It was a profoundly broken thing to witness... Amidst all these thoughts, the pieces of beauty in her hand were moving, shaking, spinning. They were remembering that they were once a whole thing and as such they were returning to that construction. More so they were learning a new thing, a new shape, a new way to be beautiful. She knew how to do that, too. She bent her fingers back slightly so her palm would be more flat. The last thing she needed was for a finger to get mixed up in all of that nonsence. She watched the reconstruction without fear. Only a profound sense of wonder. When the ruby shards were finished relearning themselves into the flower's form, she twirled it slowly between her fingers, marvelling at its flawless strength and all too aware of its fragility. As if remembering Kiriren were there at all, she lifted her gaze once more, smiling this time. She wondered for a moment- If peope of magic were so good at fixing things, why were so many things broken? Unfixable. They were deemed lost. A million little pieces. And yet she held the ruby flower. So maye lost cause were a million and one little pieces. She tilted her head slightly, closed the distance between them in a few swift steps and held the flower out to him. It was his creation, after all. "She misses you." Of course, she'd never said that, and Lita knew she never would. But Lita knew it was true, all the same.
Johnathan was alway the sort of person to be seen well before he actually wandered into plan sight and that was not to say that he was at all sneaky in the way he moved but rather that good ol' Johnny was just a terribly loud person. Even now, he could be heard at the mouth of that cave as he stumbled drunkenly into its frigid maw - cussing up a storm of racial slurs and expletives that involved the female anatomy quite a bit as he tripped on a rock that he had failed to see. And then there was the singing, something horrifically off-key and very akin to the sound of a dying cat as he spouted out his lyrics, "'e counted out 'is moneh an' it made a pretteh penneh, Oi put in my pocket ta take 'ome ta dahlin' Jenny." And all the while, he punched at the cave wall with one of his brass knuckled fists in an effort to maintain a rythym to that song he slaughtered though this beat he kept did not at all match the song in any proper manner. He did not care at all though and as far as Johnathan had known, he found himself quite alone in the cave. He had not yet stumbled upon the other two and he was still far to drunk to be paying his other senses mind enough to have smelt the blood that flowed in their veins. "But da devil take da women, for dey always lie s' easy!"
Kirien had never had much of a problem in calling himself a coward - he ran if it was required and if it'd ensure his surviving another day. It was why he'd fled the island he'd come to call home and in his rush he'd unwittingly left those not wholly involved in his self-absorbed problem standing on the sidelines in confusion. He thought about her; about the Fox who'd grounded him, if only for a moment. Under a moonlit sky in a cove where waves sang and echoed off the surrounding walls, when they might have sung along to the tune but the terramancer could not remember now. He should have sent a letter or at least done -something- for her before he left. "Yknow, it's a bit of a shame." Kirien's voice was soft, almost a whisper and tinted with contemplation as he spoke to Lita, the sounds of an approaching drunkard and an off-key melody growing in his ears. "I can fix this," he said with an idle motion of the hand to the flower, his other raising to lightly grasp its stem, "et I can learn all the secrets of the world and do whatever I want with it, but I don't think I'll ever work out how to mend broken hearts." His own or otherwise. Kirien did not elaborate on this, clutching lightly at his ruby creation; and he might have watched the way it reflected crimson glints across the cavern walls had he been able to see. "…I miss her too." He missed too many people, he thought.
Lita spoke before she thought, "I think broken hearts are in that Unfixable category." A million little pieces. She was still smiling, though. "I don't think they can be mended. In the same way that we can never really forget the people we've cared about. And because we can never really forget, we can never run away." She had run away from too many people. She couldn't forget. No matter where she went. No matter how far away it was or how fast her feet could take her. She could never forget and so they were always with her. "I wish you would wr-" Her words were interrupted by something that had clearly broken the sound barrier in its travels. Not voice and not speech, not song and certainly not a melody. She usually thought the implants Ceri had given her to be blessings, able to hear distant sounds amplified past distance. At times like these, however, they seemed more a curse. She glared at the strange newcomer, not that it did much good. White noise flooded her brain and she clapped her hands over her ears. It was too loud. She couldn't think past it. The cerulean flower slipped from her grasp. She didn't want it to shatter, like the ruby one. But it wasn't so fragile. It simply floated to its place amongst brethren life. She was trying to tell her feet to move, trying to tell her feet to get out of the cave, where sound was bounced from wall to wall and back again, echoed and reverberated, ever repeated to a center point. There was a repetitive pounding. She counted; One, two, three. And she hadn't yet asked Kirien to write, hadn't asked him to write to her Fox. She needed to ask. There was white noise in her brain and she couldn't think. Her knees hit the cold floor of the cavern and a trickle of blood carved a smooth line from her inner ear against her jaw. She squeezed her eyes shut. "Shut the 'ell up, would yah!?" She yelled across the cavern. She could handle a tavern full of drunken sailors and she had learned to handle the occasional meeting in a mining cave. But she'd always remember to remove the implants first, or to politely ask that the meeting be moved to a more quiet setting. This raucous, with no purpose or drive, this was just ridiculous.
Johnathan was in his own little world for the moment, enjoying the hard earned haze of his lightly drunken state - a haze that had required he spend most of his gold to acquire but such were the downsides of being a vampire. He barely noticed the two when he had finally came upon them, his shoulder dragging against the wall of the cave as he leaned up against it and continued spouting his song. He had closed his eyes at some point and let the stoney side of this icy cavern lead him along the way rather than actually make use of his sight. "Dumdah rah mu-" The sound had cut him off and brought him to pause in his walking, brow furrowing as he pondered upon whether he had actually heard that or if he had started to hallucinate. And then he took notice of that wiff of fresh blood that had been in his nostrils for some time now and it was a scent that made one eye slowly open up to get a look at the source of this smell. "Well 'ello, 'ello, 'ello. Wot 'ave we 'ere?" He laughed but remained leaning against that wall, with only that one eye open. After all, he had to act like he knew they were their the entire time.
Kirien wanted to ask her to lie to him next time he mentioned something so stupid. Tell him, 'it'll be fine,' or something to the effect and instil within his heart a sense of false hope. Perhaps it was a good thing she'd told him the truth though, before he deluded himself into believing he'd be able to cast off all this weight and all the chains shackling him to what he could never really have. He couldn't escape. Even out here, even when all around was snow and ice and bitter winds and her chilled fingers did not brush against his cheek, he felt it. A million little pieces of confusion and hurt and childish naivety was what he was now and maybe he looked it, in glimpses caught out of the corner of an eye. "I guess," he said somewhat thickly, defeated, the acknowledgement difficult to say. "I wish I knew how to fall out of love though." She was an irresistible poison, and he was some kind of beautiful disaster. It was sinking in, growing from a niggling thought in the back of his mind to a scream - he was stuck with this eternally. So he drowned it out by turning his thoughts elsewhere. An absent watch was kept on the drunken man closer to the cavern's exit, Kirien's sense of perception allowing him to track his movements through the caves; deeper inwards, heading their way. With that came more disjointed noise and it seemed to affect Lita because suddenly she was shouting across the cavern and despite himself the vampire flinched, and his sensitive nose picked up the scent of blood that was not his own. "…You okay?" he asked as her yell echoed around them over and over, shifting forward on his knees a bit. He only looked up when the stranger that'd wandered in from the cold spoke, slurred words provoking a twitch from vulpine ears. "Ain't much you'd be interested in." Kirien's voice might've been a bit clipped. "Just a meetin'." A meeting full of unvoiced requests and recollections, it seemed.
Lita probably would have told Kirien that the only way to fall out of one love was to fall into another, more profound than the last. To find everything joyous and remarkable in every moment, every breath and heartbeat. She would have said something along those lines. Instead, she was forcing herself to stand. The noise having subsided to a dull ache behind her eyes. There was something there trying to get out, just behind her eyes. She took an instinctive step away from the mouth of the cave, away from the entrance, the exit, away from the stranger. Away from that smile and that voice. But not away from the noise. Not away from the weight that came with the conversation she had just been having with Kirien. She tried to speak, but the words failed her. She nodded slowly, right hand falling into the coat of her pocket, closing around the hilt of the dagger that rested there. She shook her left arm a bit, until the sleeve of the new coat fell past her thumb and she held it there, lifted her hand and smeared the blood from her neck and cheek, a pink blotch against her skin and a stain on her pretty new coat. "Not used to the noise is all." Her voice was small and quiet compared to what she could hear and it sounded strange to her ears, too close and too thin. She turned slightly, her attention shifting back to Kirien. She didn't dare to turn her back on the stranger though, still watched him from the corner of her eyes. "I'm sorry. I don't know if I should have come or not. I don't mean to be unhopeful. I just meant that-" She paused, searched for the right words. "Our hearts brek to remind us that we loved a person with all we are. Sometimes when we leave them in a rush, we forget to take our hearts along with us. And when we stop to catch our breath somewhere down the line, we find these shadows of the hearts we once knew." She reached out and touched his forearm lightly, reassuring. "I hope you'll write her. She'll give it back. She'll forgive you for leaving, she just, needs to know it wasn't her, I think. I hope it wasn't her." She smiled. She knew it wasn't. "She's broken, too. You're not alone in that. Maybe you hold her heart in the same way she holds yours?" She withdrew her hand. "And maybe I speak too boldly of matters that don't concern me." Shoulders rose in a little shrug. She flickered a glance to the drunk, trying not to seem too unnerved by his presence. But her heart was pounding. At least the noise was quiet. Just a dull ache. She tried to smile at Kirien. "I hope you'll write her."
Johnathan took a few more sniffs of the air, waving his hands in front of his face with quick flicks of the wrist as he made mock the act of wafting the scent towards him. It was indeed nothing more than mockery as you really could not waft something that was so very internal as blood tended to be but he did it regardless if only to make a show of the act, interupting their conversation if only because he had the terrible habit of being quite the jerk at times. He certainly did not hold his habits against himself or regret them in any noticeable manner though and, in fact, he enjoyed his habits greatly enough that he took delight in every chance to engage in them - the occasional jerkiness included. There was also curiosity there though, the ever-present desire to know something more about the two and so he took that moment to breath them both in with eyes fluttering as he lavished in that scent of blood. This was a vampire that clearly enjoyed being a vampire, to say the very least. "Oi, you dere." He said suddenly, the slurr in his manner of speech being more the way he always spoke and less caused by the fact that he was lightly buzzed off of copious amounts of cheap liqour. And as he spoke, a finger pointed almost accusingly at Kirien. "yer a youngin', amn't ye, boy?" There was laughter mixed in there, clinging to those words.
Kirien had been wonderstruck. Enchanted. He'd seen sparks fly and believed in the idea that he might one day be able to grasp hold of that stare if he just kept on reaching-- but up there, there was no air, and he'd forgotten how to breathe. And then, like she always had, she'd flown away somewhere else and he'd lost sight of her, and then he'd fallen. Then he'd found himself running from her echo. In places, in the back of his mind when he wasn't paying attention, Kirien heard it all still, loud in his ears and yet merely a whisper. Talking about it was dredging it all back up again though and the vampire quietly fought to conceal his emotions, not wanting to be thought weak even when he was breaking. Fingers clenched a little tighter round that ruby flower. "Write her-- I got a letter!" Remembering it with a jolt, the empath sat back some so as to dig around in the pocket of his trench coat lying beside him and fished out the letter the Fox had sent. "I was thinkin' of how to write back actually. In here. She said--" Kae. Kirien paused and for a second appeared lost. Instinct prompted him to run his tongue over his lips as though tasting the lingering tang of that blood. Far too delicious. "--She said she was broken." And he'd left her like that. Shaking his head and sparing a brief glance in the direction of Lita's dagger, perceptive as always, Kirien then turned toward Jonathan and blinked at him, caught off-guard. "Er? Um. Yeah." He looked back to Lita and the ghost of a smile quirked the edges of his lips, just briefly. "I will. I'll definitely write her - once I figure out how to start."
Lita had taken a careful few steps to put herself between Kirien and the wall of the cavern, so that Kirien was between herself and the stranger. Her head ached. But she was clear-headed enough to know that she did not much appreciate people looking at her like she was their next meal. It was a look she'd seen too many times before. It envoked that age old fight-or-flight instinct. The cold steel of the dagger against her palm, still hidden in her pocket, told her she could fight if she needed to, or at least by time to run. She was used to running. Her attentions flickered back to Kirien then as he spoke. She could see that play of emotions across his featured, the torrent storm that he kept captured. She wanted to reach out and touch his arm again, tell him he could let it go, tell him he would be okay, that it would all be okay. But it wasn't he place, and this wasn't the place, and she just couldn't. She wasn't strong enough to take it. She could hardly handle her own storms on a good day. Lita watched as he rummaged through his pockets, as he found that letter. She knew what it spoke of. Her Fox had mentioned that. She bit at her lower lip, remembered to breath. Kae had left, too. Left her broken. Left her for that blonde-haird flighty bird that everyone seemed to leave them all for. And then the runner had left the islands, with the little more than that note in his wake. And then Kirien. And the Lita. She bit her lip harder. And her Fox had been left in that space, that emptiness, left with little more than the ghosts of memories to keep her safe in her own storms. Lita reached down and touched his temple briefly, the ghost of fingertips against his skin. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind his ear and stole his smile, mimicked it. "Start with, 'I miss you.' It's a very good place to start."
Johnathan felt a grand sense of amusement in the entire situation, interupting this moment between the two when he was clearly very unwanted here. He did not much care if he was angering them and really, that was kind of the idea. It had been a few days since he'd enjoyed himself a decent fight so maybe he could annoy one of them enough to actually incure their wrath in a more physical manner. Oh, what a delight that'd be with the fists flying and the blood letting loose - it would certainly spice up his evening if nothing else. He clapped once at Kirien's response as he doubled himself over for just a moment to partake in a very gleeful laugh. When was the last time he had met a fresher corpse? He really could not remember. "Bloody 'ell, boy! Well, 'ows t'ings been since yer kiss o' death - as me sire put it, wet blanket 'at da ol' dead bastard were -is dis 'ere lass dinner or am Oi free ta 'ave a go 'at 'er?" Ah yes, this was Johnny, crude as could be and with nary an ounce of proper mannerism to be found in him at all. He really did not seem to notice that he was basically being ignored by the two in favor of their own conversation but he was making himself part of this little get-together regardless of that fact. If anything, he was just pleased that he had managed to take the dead one off of his guard for a moment. It was a trick of the trade and if he had been paid to rough Kirien up a bit then that would have been the moment to strike. But no one had lined his pockets with bruising money, at least not at Kirien's expense so he would not lash out lest they lashed out first. And despite mention of making her his meal, Johnathan's attention seemed to be off of Lita for the moment.
Kirien took a breath and let it out slow, and repeated his mantra silently. He hung onto those words these days as if they were some sort of drug: he was a foundation, enduring, weathering the storm; and there were cracks in his brickwork and they grew and spread deeper but he'd hold himself up despite it all, clinging to life in a most unsightly way, and he'd come out of it alive (as alive as a vampire could be at least). It had gotten to the point where he was muttering the words under his breath when fingertips brushed briefly against his skin gave him cause to look up. A flicker of bemusement crossed Kirien's expression. He blinked, once. Then he rose to his feet, slowly standing, still holding on to that flower. "It's a good place to start," he agreed with Lita with a slightly more visible smile. People had left and it might seem like the world were crashing down around them sometimes, but they were still here. He wasn't sure what she thought of him now really but if she still harboured bad feelings or memories due to the trouble he'd caused all those months ago-- well. He'd patch it up, if he could. Through all this, the vampire's gaze drifted absently, blindly; but it came to affix itself to Jonathan again at his raucous laugh, the sound ringing in sensitive ears. Lips tightened into a frown that swallowed his smile, brief as it was. To the request of a sort of turning the woman behind him into a meal, Jonathan got a harsh, "No." It came out in a hiss, something that hinted he'd be moving to protect Lita should the other attempt anything. The flower twitched in his hand.
Lita was careful not to pass a fleeting glance to Kirien. A plea. A prayer. Lie. Please lie. She was careful not to do that as the strange vampire spoke. Rather, her gaze flickered his way as he doubled into laughter. What a strange tongue he carried. Foreign, perhaps. More likely it was the liquor she could smell on him, even from here. Cheap, thin, readily available. She wasn't surprised. That look in his eyes still unnerved her though she held her ground- even if it was behind Kirien. It was his words that had her looking away though. Dinner. She didn't often register that fact that Kirien was a vampire. Along the same lines that she never registered that Hanan and Sawyer were vampries. They were there, they loved her and she them. She didn't believe for a second that they would hurt her. But she didn't know Kirien so well. She wanted him to lie. And she wanted his lie to be more lie than truth. She chewed at her lower lip. She backed away from Kirien, two small steps until the cool rock wall of the cave was pressed against her back and shoulders, the cold seeping through the coat, through her skin, into her bones. Fear. Cold and sharp and necessary. Her fingers tightened around the hilt of that dagger and she tilted her head down slightly, curls falling to frame her cheeks, even as her eyes lifted to find Johnathon. A wry grin tugged at the corners of her lips. She couldn't let Kirien defend her. She couldn't do that to her Fox. He had to write to her. It was why she'd come. She couldn't stand in the way of that, not now. But she was human, a realization she hated these days. A lamb in the den of lions. Her left hand reached forward to find the sleeve of Kirien's coat. A thanks, a warning, a please be careful, all lingering on that silent gesture. "We were leaving." She said to the stranger, her voice clear and sure. "Perhaps you could try the tavern? There's usually a willing girl or two." At least, on the island there were. She didn't actually know if things working the same in these parts or not. But it was worth a try.
Johnathan took a moment to pause in his amusement to just stare at Kirien but that moment was very short-lived and soon enough gave way to a wicked smirk. He seemed to have struck a nerve in this other vampire and that was just fine in his book. In fact, it was likely what Johnathan had been seeking to do the entire time that he had been bothering the two - strike a nerve and see where the proceeding spasm took them. "Oh, so da love-sick neck bitah does 'ave 'imself a set o' balls." Would be Johnathan's only response to Kirien's display, purposely taunting the nature of the conversation that he had been interupting this entire time. His buzz was starting to wear itself down though and his attention span was internally waning. "But 'ey, lookit dis way, yeah? A bird loik 'at, ye dun bite 'er roight off any'ow. Ye keep 'er fer yer bed an' 'ave yerself a few pushes, yeah?" He finally turned his gaze back upon Lita as he said this, giving his head a bit of a nod in her direction just to send the point home that he was suggesting exactly what he had just suggested. "But 'ey, ye saw 'er firs' an' Oi'm not one fer tablescraps an' leftovers." and with that last little overt insult tossed out there shamelessly, Johnathan had turned away to swagger himself back towards the mouth of the cave as he belted out a few more lines of that song in that painfully off-key voice. "Whack fer me daddy oh, dere's whiskey inna jar oh."
Kirien , perceptive as he was, felt Lita's emotions washing against him like a wave against sea cliffs; but he did not move away, standing firm though he did glance to the woman when she took hold of his sleeve. He felt it, the sentiments contained in that gesture, keeping quiet about them all and swallowing each into himself. It appeared they wouldn't have to leave despite Lita's remark to the other vampire because Johnathan was already making for the cavern exit, spouting words along the way that had Kirien's mouth dropping open, dumbfounded. "It's not-- not like that!" The cry, somewhat indignant, echoed a little before he quickly cut himself off, jaw tightening as he fought off a slight blush. As he'd found out due to numerous embarrassing incidents and innuendos, he happened to be particularly susceptible to the pinkening of cheeks, much to his ire. Spinning with a flourish to face Lita then, the vampire waved his hands round a bit, still a little more flustered than he usually was. "Erm. Well. That was-- that was interestin'? Drunkards, aha…" He took a moment to calm down before he said, "No worries though, aight? I'm not…I won't. Y'know. Eat you." A hand came up to rub awkwardly at his neck as he spoke.
Lita would almost find the whole situation amusing. Everything the strange vampire had just said. And she probably would find it amusing later on when she was back on the island, safe again in a place she knew, safe with Hanan around, safe. She would tell Hanan all about the encounter and Hanan would be protective and then she would laugh and Hanan would say something like 'Good thing he doesn't know you're shackin' up with a neck biter, aye?' And they would drink rum. Lots and lots of rum... Lita stared at the stranger, one brow raised in incredulous surprise. Lips parted slightly as if to allow speech but nothing came out. There were no words. She had no words. What could she say to that, honestly? She was only glad too see the stranger turn and leave, for him to leave Kirien and herself to their thoughts and their previous conversation... Lita was taken aback by Kirien's shouting after the drunkard and she couldn't help the bubble of giggles that spilled past her lips, the smile that touched the corners of her eyes. There was truth there. She leaned back a bit as he spun to face her suddenly and she bit her lower lip softly, nodded. "I know. I run with vampires, but, oddly enough, I know they won't hurt me." She made no mention of the bitten scar that usually laid so visibly against her left clavicle. She simply adjusted the collar of her coat. "I guess I'm still thankful though, that you won't eat me. I mean, I do appreciate it." She hadn't missed that blush on Kirien's cheeks, but she wouldn't say anything of it. She hardly blushed anymore. There simply wasn't reason to. "I hope things will be okay." Meaning Kirien and the Fox, meaning everything. "You've been up here a long time..." It wasn't her place to ask him to come back, wasn't her place at all. She hardly knew him. But he was important to her Fox. He was important to Alaine. Wasn't that enough. "Why don't you come home?" Her voice was soft, no insistence, just reassurance. That he'd always have a place, that he'd always be welcomed. People like them- The Row- There wasn't a place for grudges to be held. Their moments of love and life and happiness were fleeting enough without them.
Kirien continued to fluster for a moment before he stopped, lowering his hands. "I don't think she could ever hurt you, no." He meant Hanan when he said that. While the exact details of their relationship were unknown to him, the empath did know well enough by now that Lita was one person that spitfire captain was fond of - she'd gone rushing to save her when he'd set off that earthquake in one of Archmosia's attacks and wrecked the Barrel. Kirien had been glad, actually, when he first realised who had entered the cavern to disrupt his half-hearted training, able to finally settle the flicker of concern that had hung in the back of his mind. She was still alive. He wondered about the others a lot too, the people he'd run briefly away from, that was. Most he thought about he didn't actually know all that well; like Finn and Faramond and Miya, and even Hanan who he'd never quite made up his mind about. He thought about Alaine too, of course, and then those two others that it hurt to think about at all and who he tried to forget but couldn't quite wash away. The Fox probably had similar troubles, he realised. He'd no idea Finn had left, no idea others were leaving just as he'd done and that the loneliness on the island was growing. Desolation. And he'd left Alaine there. Giggling laughter dragged him out of these thoughts with a jerk however and Kirien blinked at Lita, the sounds of her laughter loud and strange and almost foreign to his ears. There wasn't enough of it, these days. His shoulders slumped slightly in what may have been relief but that was his secret, though the smile spreading quickly like wildfire across his features maybe hinted to it. Maybe laughter was just infectious. "I hope…" He paused. "I hope they will too." Meaning everything and the storm in his heart. "I--" The request had him halting again and once more Kirien blinked, caught off-guard by something he'd not expected. It took him a second to work out how to answer it and when he did, his voice was equally quiet. "Because of the moments." Usually things to look forward to, they plagued him constantly and he'd found no respite from them on the island, not even in his own home. In that little niche where his bed was contained, in the heart of a cliff, the echoes sounded loudest. Making new ones, happier ones, did little to drown out the noise and really only made everything ever more convoluted. "Too many memories of things I need to get away from. I-- I left because if I didn't I'd ruin myself et I think if I ruined myself, Fox would be even less happy with me. I just need…a bit. To let the echoes die down, to work out…" How to fall out of love. Why wasn't there an instruction book? "…things."
Lita nodded at the comment about Hanan. Had she been any sort of immpath or mind reader, she may have offered Kirien some sort of condolence about the people he knew and still loved, in his own way. She would have calmed his worries- or at least tried to- about Finn and the others. How even in the midst of the throes of some unseen war, there was peace. And not in mere moments or fleeting glances, but in the places. In the sanctum den of the Fox's foundry, there was love and safety. On the ship that seemed always docked at the harbour, there was acceptance and joy. At the Kraken- a place that had taken the place of the Barrel after its ruin- the doors were open and the drinks were many. There was laughter. Lita played her violin. She would like to play for Kirien some day, if he came back. She smiled at that. She would play and he would dance with her Fox and they would smile and laugh and live in a moment longer than any other had been before. "We ruin ourselves in our vices and in each other, we find the strength to pick ourselves up again. We put each together the best we can. And those places we can't fill, those cracks and chasms that are too hollow to be repaired, well, we accept those. Without judgement or remorse or question. We accept them with love and understanding because we've all been there." She sighed softly, let her gaze fall to the floor. "We all end up there again, even after we've been mended again." She drew a deep breath, sighed softly, and lifted her eyes to meet Kirien's gaze once more. "It's an endless cycle. I don't think we can ever hope to be who we were. I think, more than hoping to make things right in ourselves, we have to hope that we can find something- someone- who can see us- flaws and disasters and troubles and chaos- and love us because of all of that, not in spite of it." She tilted her head slightly, her smile soft, and her hand lifted, the backs of her fingers brushing his cheek tenderly. "She loves you in that way." Her voice was a whisper. "And I think because she loves you in that way, I can too."
Kirien was ever a lover of music and if she played for him, he would most certainly dance. He was always dancing in some way, moving naturally to the beat and melody of the earth beneath his feet, its song a constant pulse through him. Perhaps one day he'd end up back on that island and find some semblance of home again amidst all the debris and cobwebs of old memories. "It sounds a horrible sort of cycle really, don't you think?" He laughed then, the sound tinted with an odd sort of sadness; or maybe resignation. 'Accept it'. Of course he would. It would just take a little bit of time. "I guess it makes life interestin' though. God knows I'd be bored to death otherwise." Never mind the fact that he was already technically dead. Blind as he was, his gaze met hers as if it could still see somehow, eerie but not unfriendly, seeking something, something-- he wasn't sure what it was. Maybe he found it at that touch of fingers to his cheek. Words were in his throat but they got clogged up all of a sudden, stuck on the tip of his tongue. There were those words. Those words. Kirien hated how they could affect him, sometimes. "…I should visit her. And we-- we change. All of us. It's why I think we're able to be here now et not, ah…" Chilly fingers wiggled a little at his sides before he reached to scruffle up his hair again, absent-mindedly. "Not what we were last time we saw each other. Even if it was brief. Not sure I ever actually -met- you until now." They'd only ever passed by each other, after all. "…Et, thank you." For everything.
Lita nodded as she drew her hand back, buried her fingers once more in her pockets. "I want to be clear in the fact that she didn't ask me to come. She doesn't know I'm here." What she didn't say was that she didn't think the Fox would ever ask her to come. Alaine would consider it a nuisance, most likely. Lita would doubt she'd want to bother Kirien with such a silly thing as emotions. The thought made Lita smile. She didn't say that she wasn't planning on telling her Fox she'd come at all. Work. That was what she'd say. No one asked questions when that was her answer. Where have you been all this time? Work. "Thank you, Kirien." For his time, for the company, for the time away from the islands. It was almost nice to be with someone who could read her mind- sort of. She smiled at that. "Kirien, I was wondering if you would do me a last favor and--" She made a little face, despite the fact he wouldn't see it. She didn't want to leave alone. There was blood smeared across her cheek and she didn't want to walk past that tavern in case that strange vampire was still hanging around. She didn't want to say she was afraid of that look in his eyes.
Kirien seemed to mimic that action, hands raising to tug his coat further closed over his earlier wounds before they were stuffed into deep, cosy fur-lined pockets. The ruby flower, which he'd released in doing this, hung in the air before him for a moment before it seemed to blink out of existence in a flicker of crimson and shimmers. It filled one of his pockets up slightly, the empath always keeping himself armed with the thing - just in case. Its mimic form was incredibly useful, after all. "Aha. Shan't say a thing then about this to her, shall I?" he said with a bit of a broader grin than he'd summoned in a while. That gratitude earned her a nod of acknowledgement and quiet understanding before the following request had him blinking. "Et if I could--?" Cutting himself off like she had, Kirien paused a moment to squint, mostly needlessly, over the rim of his glasses at Lita. It took him a second or two to work out the rest of that sentence through her emotions; and when he did, that grin faded into something less amused and became a more genuine and quietly reassuring smile. "Where're you headed then? Back?" Home? He wanted to say but couldn't quite manage that last word.
Lita nodded slowly. Back. That was a good way of saying where she was headed. Sometimes forwards, mostly back. She was always going back and never going home. The thought provoked a soft smile. "I got distracted and turned around with all the snow and..." She huffed, frustrated at her lack of direction in this place. She was too far out of her element and it made her uncomfortable. She was glad to have found Kirien after all, though. His presence seemed to ease that tension in her. She supposed it was that empath thing, though she hadn't a name for it yet. "Would you mind walking me to the tavern? I'm sure I can find my way from there." She wished she could stay. She wished she could stay and talk to him some more, ask him all of the questions she knew she never would. But this place wasn't her world. She doubted it would ever be a part of her world. She wondered if he would ever be a part of her world. He was his own world entirely. But she might hope to visit from time to time, on those rare occasions when her work actually did take her so far north. She didn't think he would mind so much now that they'd found a common link for conversation. The Fox. He would write to her and she would write back and Lita would never tell her Fox that she'd come and she knew Kirien wouldn't either. So the Fox would tell her of their letters and Lita will simply smile at such a private thought. Maybe when she came again, she would bring Kirien a present- a little piece of that island he loved and missed and couldn't yet return to. So he would always know he would be welcomed back again. So he would always know he could come back. They could all go back, so long as there was always something to go back to.