[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

[polyphonos]

[Something like satisfaction blooms in her, a seed flowering. Cathaway smiles as she sets the knife aside and moves on to preparing another ingredient. It's not a laugh, but the sensation is close to it - that, or a secret kind of pride.]

Yes, we thought the same. Every time a new host hatches, we have hopes they'll be a practiced person to wrangle the array of you. But it seems we must both make due. [It's clear they're in need a politician, not a war commander - Lexa and Shepard might have had their fair share of doping out orders, but that wouldn't stand to unite the disparate young Hosts.

(Not for the first time, she misses Sam Anders--)]

You know, you won't make new allies loitering in the Station like this. Not that we mind the company.

[erbier]

[ Cathaway's pulse for Sam hits her like a hand compressing around her throat. Ilde's lips thin, eyes darkening. She had still been so hopeful, when Sam had gone from them. He had instilled her with such promise. Cathaway is right, he had been a good leader. Able to bond and bind others in a way Ilde did not have enough time to study. She thinks he might be disappointed in her, but she can't care about that. He isn't here. None of them are, not even Steven though he walks the waking world. She has to do what she needs to do to protect herself, her deceptively fragile psyche, already splintered and spit at the hosts who had tried to console her. ]

I will do what I can. I have not the open charisma to draw them to me in droves, it will only come with time and the right moments.

[ Cathaway should know, really. She too lacked that open effusiveness and warmth that put people at ease, but they would come. Or they wouldn't. ]

We can't always hold their hands.

[polyphonos]

Unfortunately true. [At present, in this exact location, she only has two hands - an exhausting design flaw, honestly speaking.]

But we could afford to be a little more [a soft noise] diplomatic. We're at a disadvantage because beings don't find us trustworthy - which, understandable. But incredibly annoying.

[Is she talking about herself or is she including Ilde? Difficult to say.]

It seems we must make an effort to be agreeable.

[erbier]

Must we?

[ Ilde is rather tired of the effort, and quite honestly she can't imagine that Cathaway finds it any more enjoyable, otherwise she might've done it from the start. She sighs with a shake of her head, taking a cube of a fleshy wet fruit that she has just carved from its tough shell and eating it languidly. ]

I think we should observe this fete, and decide from there.

[polyphonos]

[She laughs again, bright and clear as crystal as she slashes through another fresh fruit. The knife is sharp enough that all the juices don't run immediately free of it.]

You're a nasty young woman, Ilde.

[It sounds like a compliment.]

[erbier]

I've grown more comfortable with that.

[ And in growing more comfortable with what she is, she has found herself more comfortable with that archetype's place within the Nest. Blossoming rapid and aggressive like a weed. She is, assuredly, no longer the little girl who awoke here and cried to Cathaway. ]

This has been a good talk, for us.

[polyphonos]

[Yes, she's noticed that - the comfort. It would be impossible not. The recognition of it is relief mingled with concern, a latent aggressive pride tinged with a low melancholy or fear. Brilliant lights either shine for an eternity of burn away, she thinks.

And smiles, preferring for the moment to be optimistic and she wields the knife. The summery, gentle heat cheerfulness of her permeates the room, the glint off the sharp edge of the blade, through their link.]

Yes, we agree. We should do this more often.

[erbier]

[ The atmosphere that Cathaway creates tastes strange at the tip of her tongue. No, she thinks, soft. We shouldn't. This was a moment. So different from every other. They will, neither of them, ever be these two people, in this moment again. There was nothing here that could be replicated.

She sets down her knife and looks at Cathaway. There, at the tip of her tongue where the taste of summer lingers, an infuriating question is burning. An inadequate question that does not encompass what she truly wants to say. She rolls it over in her head: Who are you. It's making something pinch in the back of her thoughts. She's about to open her mouth and try to express it anyway, but the realization comes.

She exhales. Her head tilts at Joanne Cathaway, and sees.

Centered is something of a false equivalency. But this is us here as opposed to...us in a series of other places.

Their conversation until now takes on a different color, a sensation Ilde is growing used to. Used to the way things change, as her point of view does... It began the day she awoke in the Station to discover there was more than she had ever imagined. Discovered her world was the manifestation of one terribly powerful man's wretched perceptions. ]

You've only to ask, dear.