[closed-ish] all the way north on the train the sun

[polyphonos]

CHARACTERS: Cathaway & [Ilde/Prince/insert option C]
WHERE: Station 72
WHEN: Day :036+
SUMMARY: Catchall for Cathaway on the Station mid-Waypoint Shril and beyond; Cathaway and Ilde prepare a meal; Prince and Cathaway have a serious conversation over tea.
WARNINGS: N/A, will update as necessary.

[It’s on a chain and my father said
to me Don’t get too close I saw it was
staring down at each of our faces
one after the other as though it might
catch sight of something in one of them
that it remembered I stood watching its eyes
as they turned away from each of us]

((ooc: In or around the Station Day :036 or beyond? Drop me a starter or PM me for something. All threads will be set prior to the end of Mission Waypoint Shril.))

Comments

FOR ILDE

[polyphonos]

[At most, they had a few more days before the hosts returned to the Station - either with their prize or without it. In the interim, the Station has been... not quiet, not really. This is the closest she's been to a mission's ground zero while still attending her duties and in every hour of the day she can hear the hum of the Host's minds buzzing along their tracks. If she focuses, she might parse one sensation from another - might put names to the the flicker of heat or arrogance or impatience or delight or gentleness.

But she doesn't. Focus on it. They are best left to their own devices and she would hate to pry where she isn't welcome or needed. And she has things to do - bits of the Station to nurture or maintain, threads of far flung Agents to sort, card games to play.

And this: this small task being performed here in the kitchens of Life Support in the company of Ilde. Cathaway has set out a series of utensils and tools, an assortment of ingredients in an array of colors and textures. Hours ago, she requested Ilde's company and now she has it.

She peels some alien fruit, the juice sluicing through her fingers and into a bowl set to catch it.]

Have you ever cooked before, dear?

[Soon the Station would be full again, thronging with Hosts fresh off their missions. Soon the Station would return to its between space where time sat irregularly and the sensation of the universe feels numb and muted. She plans to have something special to celebrate it with so that they can all pretend otherwise for an hour or three.]

[erbier]

[ For herself, this time away from the others is the quietest anything has been since she escaped the enemy to this Station. It is welcome to her, beneath whatever veneer she wears, she will always long for quiet. For little more than the breath of a simoon across a wasteland, for little more than the stir of leaves as spiders clambered through them. The little noises of the Station itself have been acceptable in that way. Its sighs, the locus of its strange sounds, not quite words, not quite mechanical.

Cathaway and the Prince are mostly tolerable companions in this. They are quiet in their own ways, and leave her be, except... Now here she is with Cathaway, watching her movements quietly, suspicious of why she's been summoned but unwilling to fret openly about such a thing. ]

Not as you suggest, no.

[ Not in a kitchen, not with a recipe. She has cooked small vermin over flame in her life, that is the extent of it. The rest has been as Cathaway knows it: the drip of fruit, the comfort of renewable food grown at her own touch, the sense of her importance that she be blessed enough to eat of it, the intoxicating and unearthly ozone of the Godking's magic intertwined with the dirt, greenery, and stagnant water. ]

I had not the means.

[ And now she had not the inclination, she ate what she herself grew, simple and raw. ]

[polyphonos]

Fair enough. She - Cathaway, we mean - didn't do much of it either.

[The tough shell of the trust's peel falls away from her knife and into the counter with a hollow clack.]

We thought it would be nice to have everyone together when they come back to the Station. Unfortunately, free food is often the only good motivator to get everyone in the same room.

Here-- [She turns the knife deftly in her fingers and offers it out to Ilde. There's a small collection of like fruits to be carved up.] Would you help us with that?

[She does, after all, know how to use a knife.]

[erbier]

[ She comes. Indeed, this is a task she is quite practiced at. Her garden had been intended for Dreus, and sometimes he intended lavish feasts of fruit and vegetables. Camille's violent demise was tied to such a scene, or rather the witch had been tied to a chair before such a scene.... Ilde tries not to think on it. That particular memory disturbs her.

Instead, she begins to work on the next bowl, comfortably and mindlessly peeling and cubing. ]

Would it? [ She asks eventually, as her thoughts settle. ] Be nice to have everyone together.

[ She isn't convinced of it. So many of them need more time before they will be even halfway pleasant, in her mind. ]

[polyphonos]

[She laughs, absent and melodic. That's fair as well. Half the hatches are unmitigated disasters, sharp or brutalized or both, and the rest-- well, they're an incongruous selection of beings to be sure.]

Be that as it may, we would like to do our best to foster a more natural environment of companionship. It seems like a missed opportunity to expect the lot of you to care for one another when we've done nothing to assist you.

[Not that one meal around a shared table would fix anything, but for some people it would be enough to pretend. As she'd told Prince - fake something with enough frequency and eventually it becomes true.]

[erbier]

[ Ilde sighs heavily. ]

I never achieved the understanding I had hoped for. Nor the strength in my brood, that I knew was there.

[ She responds, eyes on her work, the blade pressed down beneath her thumb as the waxy skin of some wildly fuchsia fruit spools off. There is a lack of particular emotion to this statement, it is more a status update than her usual fraught confessions to Cathaway. The woman knows what she had wanted, what she had tried to share and show with the others. ]

Perhaps the others will do better.

[ She doubts it, but if it's Cathaway's desire to try, then there's no reason not to. It's not like Ilde has to attend, and she likely won't. ]

[polyphonos]

[There's a large head of something like a cabbage; Cathaway draws a hefty knife and makes short work of separating it into two halves, firing out the brilliant blue gelatinous middle then curbing that. Her hands are efficient, capable even if she has no joy for the task.]

We realize this may sound insensitive and don't mean to make light of your loss, but- [she sweeps the cubed jelly into a small bowl, then repeats the process with the next leafy head.] Remember that your brood is just a piece of a whole. It's true that their loss is painful [devastating even] but you are still a leaf on a branch on a tree even if that branch has become... sparse.

['This too shall pass' is a stupid phrase and she doesn't believe in it. But maybe 'This is just one part' isn't so difficult a concept.]

[erbier]

[ She quirks the vaguest of smiles, her exasperation still muddling it sharp at the edges, but she knows exactly what Cathaway means. She and her elder have had their differences, but Ilde has always been more alike to her than not. More than one of the others has said something to the effect of 'who will be the next Cathaway.' What a limited view. Cathaway was just one part. Ilde was another. ]

Thank you. [ She says softly. ] Loss has always driven me forward.

[ She opens up. Part burgeoning flower, part spider web made to sing. In the absence of her brood, other voices have risen up more clearly. She hears them, listens to their disparate canticles, and increasingly has begun to add her own. Her own tale, her own grievances and beliefs, a contribution to a greater dream. ]

( You seem different today. )

[polyphonos]

[The transition to the mental length is as natural as her grip on the knife's smooth, cool handle. The tough leaf separates under the blade--]

( Is that right? We must be careful when the Station is breached. Our attentions must focus here in case some danger manifests. )

[While moored in the void, there was no reason to pin her attention so completely to the Station or its resident Hosts. No, for the most part she's better served by being Elsewhere - eyes and ears and thoughts leaking in from across the universes. But she can't afford to be distracted while the Station is exposed.]

We hope that's a good thing.

[A small joke.]

FOR PRINCE

[polyphonos]

[There is work to be done and without the disturbance of the void's effects on the Station, it seems the hours slip between her fingers - there then gone again,
faster than she can account for. There are adjustments to be made, constant monitoring to be aware of (lest something pierce this universe and find them sprawled out and vulnerable here). It feels like days since she was last truly at ease.

That isn't a complaint. The work suits her. The demands on her attention are invigorating. Cathaway can't help but enjoy herself, even if it means sleeplessness and the sensation of a creature crawling under her skin at all times - even if it means she's forced to live here, in this space and universe more often than she'd before.

But maybe that's why when she turns a corner and spies a doorway that shouldn't be there, she notices it as opposed to sweeping past it toward her destination. Or maybe it's because she can feel the pointed note of his thoughts on it like a signature. Either way, Cathaway's attentions have been diverted: she turns into the doorway and makes her way down this secret, quiet cooridor formed into the Station's core.]

[regalled]

[It is foolish to even entertain the idea that she may call on him before he calls on her, but he does anyway. Not until the last possible moment of course, that was not his way, but as near as he was likely to get. Then, with the responsibility solely at his feet, he set about to doing what he would need to do. He did not need to tidy his rooms, for they were already tidy, but he did make some attempt at making the more fit for company, when he wasn't doing the work that truly did take up most of his day. And then, when it seemed opportune, he gathered the necessary supplies, and considered how to issue the invitation.

Directly seemed far too direct and far too- presumptuous. Demanding. So he settles instead on the least direct method this place allowed him and coaxed the station into inviting her. There would always be a door that would lead down toward the deeper recesses of the station, where he found some amount of rest away from the loud minds of the younger hosts.

The hall terminates at a door familiar to her, simple and styled precisely as a door on the station would be- if there were other doors- behind which lies the first of his rooms. The entry, the low couch, the heavy desk. Beyond that there is his bed, tucked behind another entrance way, and to the left of that a space not often used- another open doorway. It's in front of it that Prince stands, wearing a somber colored tunic that's austerity is undone by too many buttons, too much piping, a silken band about his middle. It isn't quite what his people had worn, but it is near enough. The concept is the same. It also feels as though it fits him poorly, but he knows that is only from disuse.]

Cathaway- [a simple greeting accented with a shallow bow and an outheld hand-] I hope I am not interrupting.

[polyphonos]

[Doors are a rarity in a place that doesn't understand them - a particular luxury crafted by an especially stubborn mind. She'd once told Pidge such things weren't possible. Not in Life Support where the Station was too busy being accommodating. Had she ever asked for the Prince's help, she wonders? Maybe he feels that at the edge of her thoughts and she lets herself through the series of corridors and small, private rooms. She should say something to the girl. Give her a little piece of something to look forward to. It might be encouraging.

If she thinks idly on it, she can feel the hum of his mind beside her - but she does her best not to, so the shape of his thoughts don't solidify into something she can read like the lines on her face in a mirror. Perhaps that's why she finds his clothes surprising, her drifting awareness turning to this place by a perceptible degree as she enters this last chamber.]

Of course not.

[There's plenty she can accomplish from here. But he knows that. With a chime of small metal she crises to take his outstretched hand, leaving the door open behind her. She's left them all open.]

Is something troubling you?

[regalled]

[He felt strongly about doors. Boundaries. But he had lived on the station a very long time without any, alongside the rest of the hosts in the open and pocketed halls of life support. He had earned these doors, in a way, had learned how to ask for them, and while he had never given a young host private places to sleep he had made them their own spaces, when they needed them. If they knew how to ask. Places with some kind of privacy for the time between.

Hypocracy that he could live with.

Doors don't currently concern him however. There was no one here to keep out that would find their way here, so the open entry that Cathaway leaves behind her doesn't leave him anxious or irritated. It was irrelevant. More focused on the slight degree he bends his fingers as her hand settles across his.]

No more than usual. [It's almost a joke. He was so often troubled, at least this was something that he could control in some way.

He barely pauses before turning to lead her back into the room behind him, two low and mismatched fabric benches about an equally low table festooned with dozens of small dishes and inscrutable instruments and a low, spicy scent from some gently smoking vessel. She has seen this before but not in some time (possibly never alone with him). He pauses beside one of the benches and waits very patiently for her to sit.]

[polyphonos]

[If she appreciates the rare flash of humor, it's obscure enough to not disturb the otherwise still surface of her. --Not that she isn't paying attention. No, he leads her to the low table and her mind is taut like a thread fixed between two points. She takes a seat and the rich scent from the pot and the fine little details on the handmade dishes do absolutely nothing to ease the tension. The last time she'd sat at such a table, Nulheer Vulbhan had been just there at her left elbow telling a story they had all already known as Cameron Moral wrote a new line with one hand and ate a flaking pastry with the other, head bowed.

The effect is something like three version of deja vu and for a split second she's aware enough to be unsettled by it. What has the reason been for stopping these little meetings? Someone had died, but now she can't remember which.

--Surely he must sense her discomfort, riding high like oil on water. If he'd decided to kill himself, she would have realized it as he thought it. If not before.

Wouldn't she?

Replacing him would be problematic, thinks the smallest part of her, but it's remote enough a thought to be just an echo - low enough even to her mind that it's probably easy to miss.]

[regalled]

[He waits until she is seated fully before he drops her hand and steps back to circle around to his own side of the table, setting his fingertips on the table and lowering himself to sitting, knees bent to the side for the low cant of it. Yes, he is aware, but he's not- looking. Not digging. He valued his own privacy and he valued hers, more than she did most likely, and the temptation to take the simple road- to tailor his own actions and his own words based on her reactions would be too great if he did not draw another line for himself.
, he can sense her discomfort, and he is not so foolish to be unaware of the possible reasons. They had not done this for some time. It had been- some small controlled thing that he had clung to, when they had been more than two, and when the station was only a temporary respite from the storm. With just them, always here, what had been the point? She had not been the broodmate most fond of the ceremony. Still, he did not think she missed them as he did- not quite the same. She hadn't lost them the way that he had.
Still

Dwelling- distracting. This was not his purpose here. He clears his throat lightly, looking up from the collection of ceramic and brass, carefully expectant that she meet his eyes, pretending that the swirling of her mind less real than the swirling of scented smoke.]

Thank you for coming. With your permission- [It is formal, structured, but he does not wait before he reaches out to pick up the first of the necessary dishes, setting the low wide saucer in front of him and reaching for the small jars of tea, their little tongs.]

You have been busy?

[polyphonos]

[She makes a small noise of assent - yes of course, he may do whatever ritual thing he cares to -, but hardly pays any attention to the motions of his hands or the small sounds of the small plates or the kiss of the brass lip against the fine edge of a cup. The smell is powerful, the tang of spice sitting high in her nose and deep in her throat and for a moment she is sorry for poor--

Someone. The Prince, maybe. Or herself.

She thinks it, then sets the thought aside like a souvenir on a side table.]

No more than usual.

[It's humorless out of her mouth.]

[regalled]

[He makes a small sound in return, doing his level best to remain unfazed even as he carefully distributes the correct assortment of different herbs and teas onto the saucer, lifting the small pestle to combine them.]

It seems different. I almost forgot how heavy the station could seem.

[He fills in the conversation over the dull scraping sound, because this was the time for talking- (unless it was a high ceremony, but he would never attempt one of those on his own-) and because it is true. They were in space, but everything around then had sone small portion of gravity- entirely unlike the empty silence or in between.

Satisfies that the correct texture has been achieved he sets aside the pestle again, reaching across the table with both hands to grab the little funnel and the intricate tea basket.]

FOR NOCTIS

[polyphonos]

[Even with Ilde's assistance, there's plenty to be done to prepare for her little banquet. Maybe that's why Cathaway ends up migrating back to one of the kitchens on the Life Support deck. Or maybe she's just following the miasma of feeling flooding off the young host there. He's loud enough that she could sense him before he even returned to the Station, before he stepped off the shuttle, before he retreated back to where it felt quiet on the Station before his mind had come along to clutter it.

She appears in the doorway of the kitchen as Noctis is going about his business. She has a basket of fresh fruits in an array of both unnatural bright and fetid, muted colors hanging from one arm.]

Back already?

[somnifacient]

[Noctis is tired in every way fathomable; mind, body, spirit. While he can school his body language to appear otherwise (walking tall, pressing forward), this mind is not so contained. It softly oozes uncertainty and guilt, exhaustion and impatience in equal measure, through every open fissure. Frustration rises more prevalently in this moment, because he's trying to remember -- a recipe that he's watched Ignis prepare, time and time again. He had been too (lazy, unwilling?) complacent to really learn all those years ago, but it looked easy enough. How hard is it to prepare a tomato and egg stir fry?

(Proof of how incompetent he is in the kitchen is evident everywhere. Scattered utensils, messily diced tomatoes (or some equivalent), a stovetop that he's ignoring for now because why not save the scariest part for last?)

He's focused, so much that when he attempts to crack and egg into a bowl, Cathaway's voice and presence almost manages to startle him. Out comes the yolk and the whites into the bowl... along with a smattering of eggshell, and his fingers feel particularly messy now.]

Agh, damn it... [He mutters, then turns to look at Cathaway from over his shoulder, still vaguely surprised. He eyes the fruit that hangs from her arm with muted curiosity, but focuses instead on her question without sounding too embarrassed.]

Yeah, just... making some food to recharge.

[polyphonos]

And you came all the way back to the Station to do it? Are there no kitchens on the Waypoint?

[There's a mild sliver of amusement there, layered in the shape of the words and under them. She smiles as she steps through the doorway and moves to set the basket on the counter. Clearly, it's more of a hypothetical question than it is something she cares to know the answer to. The one that follows, though--]

Are things starting to make sense yet?

[Less hypothetical. She opens a drawer and retrieves a long, dangerously slim knife from it.

Evidently she has no comment for his cooking ability - no need to add insult to injury, after all.]

[somnifacient]

[He can sense that's a question of the most hypothetical sort, and while he gives no answer to it as a result, to Noctis it's obvious why -- the Waypoint is swathed with far too much noise and chaos. Here, at least, in the quiet control of the Station, he is afforded an uneasy peace. While the young king finds the stillness a bit disconcerting, it's far more preferable in a multitude of ways.

Noctis crosses over a short distance to wipe his hands on something reminiscent of a tea towel. His fingertips still feel sticky from egg whites, and he can't help but rub them together critically. It's only the glimmer of a slender knife emerging from a drawer that draws his attention away from the minor annoyance.]

No. [Honest, at least, if not incomplete.] I understand technically what's happened, but if you mean still trying to wrap my... head around being part of this "Nest"...

[Then no. It doesn't make sense. Another person's thoughts and emotions shouldn't be shared so readily; he shouldn't share his own so readily.]

I'm still working on it. [A beat, and a complaint:] Everyone projects too much.

[polyphonos]

That's understandable. We remember it being difficult to adapt at first.

[She turns the knife under the glint of the light, then reaffirms her grip on it before she begins to carve the fruit from from basket free of its skin. She quarters the trimmed, brilliantly green flesh with an easy flick of the wrist.]

Eventually your mind will quiet and you'll come to see the mental overlap for what it is - an advantage in the field, if nothing else. But personally? We find the overlap liberating. [There's a practiced, simple warmth to the statement. It's gentle, curving like a summer breeze.] But we can't imagine this is really what you want to talk about either.

[somnifacient]

[Liberating? He seems doubtful of that, the way his mouth twitches into a frown revealing this much. To Noctis, in this moment in time, the mental overlap feels anything but freeing. It derails his focus, making it quite the opposite of advantageous.

All he can do is take her word for it. Cautiously, at any rate.]

Don't really have a lot to say. [Out comes the aloof part of him, the side that leans away from extroverted tendencies out of habit alone. Yet as he watches her separate the skin of the fruit from its flesh, a curiosity rises.]

What are you making?

[Well, rather, he knows it's just fruit but-- ingredients for something, maybe?]

[polyphonos]

[The first remark has her smiling small over her work, but she says nothing in response. Instead she moves on to the next fruit, skinning and quartering it as mechanically as the first.]

It's a dish from home. [From one of them.] The fruit is pureed with a liqueur and allowed to chill and age, then swirled in with a sticky grain. It's a dessert meant for a special occasion. This fruit isn't exactly what we need for it, but it's close enough to pass.

[Click, click goes the heel of the knife.]

[somnifacient]

[Cathaway uses the knife with a proficiency that reminds him of Ignis. Straight, even cuts. Mechanical from practice, an effortless movement. A long time ago, his chamberlain had tried to each him how to dice vegetables in such a way. Noctis had resigned himself to humoring the man by trying (not without a roll of his eyes), and the end result had been laughable at best. The vegetables had been sliced, but they were uneven and spread messily across the cutting board, and at the end of the day, the young prince ended up with a bandage wrapped around his finger to stop the bleeding.

A pang of nostalgia blossoms in his chest, carrying such a memory with it. He tries to return his focus to what Cathaway had been saying.]

And what's the special occasion?