A Self-Assigned Task
Who: Kierban and Davie Where: The main hall When: Anesus 5, noonish
Kierban hated full moon nights. The moon had already risen and set (although the raging storm concealed the fact) but that didn’t change the fact that he always felt a little more miserable when the full moons were soon to come or recently passed. It didn’t even matter if the moon was his own or not, because every luminous orb invoked the same sorrow and melancholy. They were reminders of his childhood days when people had actually cared for him.
No, that was unfair. There were those who were kind to him here, and his old pack of his juvenile years had cared for him in their own way because even if he was a turned omega, he was still their omega. But the full moons made him remember and miss the human family who had tried so hard to hold on to and shelter him when he’d become one of the Parnsehi. He even, in a peculiar way, missed being tied and bound so he could not act on the Parnsehi moon’s madness. There was no one to do that for him here, or at least no one he felt he could ask.
Parnsehi was now the next due to rise in full, too. At least the holes in the walls were gone. Kierban had feared he would have to be run out into the wilds like the poor Lenhakrirons had the night before. That would have cast him out into the night with Svathe, who he feared terribly. And speaking of Svathe, because of that vicious alpha, Kierban was afraid to approach that little Lykos, Tabrika, even though she had…requested it? Invited him to? Well, at the very least, given him tentative permission to find her again. But Svathe’s one still-human packmate had her room across the hall from Kierban’s, and he’d heard her talking and thus he knew: Tabrika had Drifter’s Right with Svathe’s pack. And Kierban? Did his absolute best to stay far away from anything that was Svathe’s to any degree.
But life went on in all the ways it ever did. There were chores to be done and a hundred other souls who might need his help in some way today, and there didn’t seem to be a challenge to face, unless the storm was it. It meant no one would be hunting today, but the pantry was full and no one would starve. Only those Lykos who liked to hunt fresh meals would be inconvenienced by it when they tried to go out and found the courtyard gates locked.
And judging by the muddy footprints by the doors in the main hall, plenty had been just so unconvinced. Thus did Kierban assign himself his first extra chore of the day: he procured a mop and a couple buckets of water, and set about cleaning up the dirty tracks that paws or feet had left behind. It was good work, useful work, and it kept him busily in one of the places he liked to be best—the main hall, where there were always people to watch.
Having been up late the night before thanks to the thunder, Harlan, and Elanna, Davie slept well past his usual rising hours. He therefore found himself seated at a table in the main hall around noon, idly debating whether the meal he was eating should be considered breakfast or lunch.
Without much to ponder as he nibbled at the contents of his plate, he occupied himself by looking around the room. It wasn't crowded, though there were scattered people of various species sitting at the tables and a few feet off to the side of where he was sitting another boy was mopping the floor. It wasn't someone he knew by name, but he had seen the boy before and felt like he knew something about him, but couldn't remember what. The kind of magic he was studying? Probably something like that.
"Is that an assigned chore?" Davie asked, half out of curiosity and half out of boredom. He was beginning to feel more confident in striking up conversations now that he'd been here a few days and people seemed to treat him like an actual human being instead of some kind of terrifying freak.
It wasn't until a moment later that Davie remembered what little he knew about the boy in question. He dressed like a human, but was actually a Lykos. Davie bristled at the thought, and inwardly cursed himself for not thinking more before he had initiated a conversation. And he couldn't very well back out of it without it being conspicuously awkward, and while he would rather avoid Lykos he wasn't too keen on the idea of causing an incident. Shifting his gaze to stare intently down at his food, he let out a sigh. Oh well, too late now.
Always attentive to those around him, Kierban was aware of the human at the table well before the younger boy spoke. He was obviously one of the newcomers, but not one Kierban had actually met yet. The turned Lykos kept an eye on the human no more and no less than all the others in the room, as Kierban was an equal-opportunity Samaritan and the newcomer didn't appear likely to have issues with his plate of lunch, but his focus was easily shifted when the bored-looking boy surprise him by speaking first.
Kierban offered up a sheepishly tentative smile as he paused to rinse his mop in one of the buckets, but the expression had hardly touched his face before the human was staring down at his food. A little confused, but never the sort to ignore a question asked of him, Kierban responded anyway.
"No, I j-just thought someone had better clean up this m-mud," he answered, freeing one hand for a moment to tug unthinkingly at his scarf and then grasping the mop handle again. He hesitated in putting the mop back to the stone floor, however, in his uncertainty regarding the human's expression. "Is, um...s-something wrong with your meal?"
Davie glanced briefly at the other boy before going back to gazing at his food. So far, the disguised Lykos was a bit of a mystery. He seemed oddly timid and, for someone of a species that makes its home in the great outdoors, surprisingly conscientious about dirt. Davie wondered if the stuttering was a normal thing for him, or if he'd been surprised by Davie's sudden question.
"No, nothing wrong." As if to illustrate the point, Davie took a big mouthful of food. That also meant he didn't have to come up with anything to say for a minute. What kind of conversation was he supposed to have with a Lykos, anyway? He mentally kicked himself again for getting himself into this situation. Stupid self, stupid, stupid, stupid...
Kierban was well attuned to reading the emotional cues of others, by virtue of simply being who he was as much as by having the keener senses of a Lykos, so the human boy's sudden tension was obvious to him, at least in the fact that it was present. As for what had brought it on, when all Kierban had done was answer the simple question he'd been posed--that remained inexplicable.
The deliberate mouthful of food was also blatant, as timed as it had been to the preceding comment, though Kierban entirely failed to see how he had--apparently--offended or otherwise irritated the newcomer. All he was doing was mopping, and it was the human who had spoken first….
Though he cautiously put his mop back to the floor and continued what he'd been doing, Kierban's strongest impulse was to make himself scarce. He was most definitely not the sort to inflict his continued presence on those who begrudged it--but he wasn't about to abandon his chore when it was barely begun, and it troubled him that he'd apparently done something wrong all without realizing.
"Are y-you adjusting to the c-compound well?" he tried timidly, the only thing he could think to say to possibly invite an explanation for what he'd done wrong. It was one of his standard questions for newcomers, anyway.
Having finished his mouthful, Davie made an effort to actually address the Lykos. He started the conversation, so he should at least try to be cordial. After all, he appreciated it when people at home were cordial to him despite what they thought about him. Though in this case, he was dealing with an actual Lykos, which was different from people at home because a real Lykos might actually be something to be worried about as opposed to them being freaked out by Davie, who was still solidly a human. Definitely different, and he was justified in avoiding Lykos because they're the ones that made him a freak at home. So he told himself.
"I'm adjusting well, I guess," he commented, trying to tone down his obvious displeasure at the other's company. On the other hand, there wasn't a whole lot more to say about adjusting, since he wasn't one for talking about anything too personal even when he got along well with whoever he was talking to. "Have you been here long?" he finally decided was an appropriate question. The other boy wasn't one of the new arrivals, but he had no idea what year he was. It also occurred to him that he didn't know the other boy's name, either, but maybe he would get to that later.
Kierban slowly swabbed his mop along the floor, cleaning away traces of mud even as he kept his concerned gaze mostly on the human. Perhaps the newcomer was just one of those who would dislike him simply for what he was, once they discerned it. For every person in the compound who was kind and pitied him, there was another who would be offended by him simply because he existed. A disheartening fact, but that was just the way things went. Nevertheless, Kierban tugged at his scarf again, as if it had fallen and betrayed the mane along his neck, though it had not.
"This year will be my th-third," he answered dutifully, rinsing the mop again. "I'm K-Kierban. You'll, um, p-probably see me around a lot, d-doing chores and helping p-people." He was a little afraid to tell the standoffish human he could help him with things, too, lest he be rebuked in scorn, but he still had that urge to make himself available to most of those that he met. Alluding to his usual habits seemed a pseudo-satisfactory medium.
Kierban was right about Davie just disliking what he was. He seemed nice enough, and it was beleivable that he liked to help people, but Davie was hesitant to trust a Lykos about anything, no matter how nice they seemed. If the people in his village were so creeped out by the fact that he had almost been turned into a Lykos, then an actual Lykos must be something pretty bad. Davie wondered briefly if this boy's definition of helping people included biting people. That's certainly what the Lykos he had met way back when had seemed to think.
"Aren't you warm in that scarf?" Davie questioned after a brief silence. He found the compound to be a bit cold, himself, but given how little clothing other Lykos wore it seemed odd. Besides, there wasn't anything else to talk about, and he hadn't finished his food yet.
Kierban made no effort to break the silence before the human did. If the newcomer decided he didn’t want to speak to Kierban after all, the turned Lykos was the very last person who would force him to. But when addressed, Kierban would answer—though the question posed made him shuffle self-consciously and brush a hand over his numerous, secondhand layers of human clothing.
“Sometimes,” he admitted sheepishly, hands back on the mop and eyes on the muddy-wet floor. Oftentimes, actually—in the summer and in the rooms warmed by fireplaces and the heat of numerous bodies—but the emotional comfort weighed more than the physical. “B-but I, um…well….” He fumbled uncertainly, embarrassed in a way, not knowing if an explanation was really being sought or if the base answer was enough, but then feeling that it wouldn’t do for him to trail off like that without completing the thought. It might irritate the human.
“I l-like these c-clothes better,” he re-answered, glancing timidly at the younger boy. Only because it was no secret and there was no point in withholding the fact, Kierban added: “They’re like f-from before I was t-t-turned.”
Alright, Davie just wasn't quite sure what to say to that. It hadn't occurred to him that the other's odd manner of dress for his species might be due to him not originally being of that species. That means what happened to Davie had happened to him, except that he turned and Davie didn't. He had been about to put another bite of food in his mouth when the other had spoken, but he set it back down on his plate instead.
"I'm sorry," he muttered quietly, not sure what else there was to say.
Kierban offered the human another sheepish smile even though the other wasn’t looking. As a rule, humans didn’t like learning Kierban had been turned from one of them, but he wasn’t the kind of person who could lie and say he was just a Lykos who enjoyed human clothing. Who would believe such a thing anyway?
“It’s al-r-right,” he replied tentatively. As much as he felt the human would be happier to be left to his meal in silence, he still had that pitiful urge to put the younger boy at ease first, somehow. It probably came from being a scapegoat. Walking away from someone you had upset always came back to bite you. Sometimes literally.
“It h-happened a long t-time ago,” he added, in hopes of assuring the newcomer that his turning was an old wound, rather than a fresh one.
Davie rubbed at his shoulder where bite marks could be found under the safe cover of his shirt. He barely realized he was doing it. As for the comment about the other boy's turning not being recent, he resisted the urge to say he hoped that was true. Otherwise some Lykos was doing an exceptionally bad job of honoring the peace agreement.
"Have the Lykos... treated you well?" Davie asked tentatively, not sure he even really wanted to hear the answer. Despite his hated for the Lykos and his conviction that he was actually better off being human, it had been more than once when the thought occurred to him that he might have had a better life if he'd just let himself change. The fact that the other boy was clearly lacking any form of self-confidence and seemed to cling to his human roots seemed to say that Davie had been right, but he was curious how the human-turned-Lykos would answer the question.
Kierban noticed the human’s fidgeting, but thought no more of it than he would another uncomfortable gesture. People’s hands roved when their feet could not. He tugged his scarf, some people twisted their hair or chewed their lips, and the younger human rubbed his shoulder.
“It d-depends on the Lykos,” he answered with a shy, lopsided smile. “I’m al-w-ways the omega, b-but there are those wh-who are n-nicer about it th-than others.” And, in turn, those who enjoyed making him more miserable than others, but that didn’t need to be directly voiced. He’d already made the newcomer uncomfortable enough, hadn’t he? “N-nobody’s taken m-me into their p-pack here, b-but the one I w-was with before the c-compound…well, I w-was the scape-g-goat, but I was s-still theirs, y-y’know?”
It was hard to explain the feeling of being part of something, even if you were just the basest and most pitiful piece. It often came out sounding worse than he meant. Maybe it wasn’t great, maybe sometimes it wasn’t even good, but…it wasn’t nothing.