Who: Ari & Aud What: Birthday bitching. About everything ever. Where: Vivi’s estate When: Backdated to June 2 (Gemini 13) Rating: PG-13-ish Status: Complete
Aspel had stayed the night, and even remained with her long enough for a (very late) breakfast, which had been more than Ari had expected of the other woman, truthfully. Having sobered up, she felt a bit sheepish about some of the things she’d said and done the night prior, but…
Well, Aspel wasn’t mentioning them, and Ari wasn’t either, but her mood was not improved by them, nor by the headache she had earned. Her solution, naturally enough, was to gather a few bottles of the wine she had been gifted with and make her way to Audrey’s temporary residence. That she gave no warning hardly mattered; through the haze of her memories, she thought the ninja had been rather subdued last night, and what were best friends for if not unexpected drop-ins and massive wine consumption in the middle of the afternoon, especially when there was a birthday as an excuse?
Fortunately, Vivi’s butler confirmed her hopes -- Lord Norwood was out, but his wife was in, and would Miss Chiaro like to be taken to her? Ari confirmed that Miss Chiaro would like that very much, which was how she found herself at a very nice sitting room door as the butler knocked and announced her presence.
He is near. He is coming.
Startled from the knock, Audrey jumped from her seat. Her eyes darted to the gem in front of her shaking off the warning before quickly pocketing and glancing back to the door. "Come in!" she called as the butler opened the door and ushered Ari in. Audrey paused waiting for the man to leave, but before he reached the door he offered to bring tea and biscuits. With only quick look to her friend, she knew there was something else on the agenda. Shaking her head, she dismissed him and the two were left alone.
"So? How did last night go?" her grin grew. Standing up, she neared a cabinet and picked up a pair of glasses. Setting one glass in front of her friend, she pushed her own towards her and waited for the bard to pour.
“So, no wine from fancy teacups today, I take it,” Ari said, fishing out the corkscrew she had helpfully brought along (this was not a first time by any means) as well as one of the bottles from the large cloth bag she had hauled over. “And you know,” she continued, going to work on the cork, “I’m sober right now, so I’m going to say, better than anticipated, and simultaneously worse than hoped. What I’ll say two or three drinks in is yet to be determined.”
The first bottle opened, she poured two glasses and passed to her friend as she said, “So, happy birthday to me, it’s likelier that you got any significant action last night than I did, but I got breakfast, which was more than I expected.”
Audrey scoffed taking a drink of the wine. "The only action I've had is Conrad and Isabella's adultery. This noble wife living is getting too real for me." The sentence alone urged her to take another drink from the glass.
“Well, at least you’re putting my gift to good use,” Ari said with a sigh. Her own situation wasn’t quite so desperate -- it wasn’t as though she’d been forced into complete celibacy by social convention (Faram forbid), but her own life in this regard wasn’t really much better. Of course, she always had Drake, the steady and reliable person who had insinuated himself into her life and heart without her quite noticing how he’d done it, but…
She took another drink. “Any advice in that book of yours about what to do when your lover -- former lover? -- is a complete idiot suddenly spooked by her own shadow, let alone your company? Because if so, I’m a bit sorry I didn’t read it.”
“Hardly,” she replied quickly. “And everything it’s telling me to do in my situation is hardly even working, so that chocobo’s been shot in the face. Although I swear I’ve read this book before. The names sound too familiar.” Leaning back in her chair, she heard a whisper by her ear startling her into an upright position.
I know it is him, hume child. Why do you refuse to listen?
Her gaze immediately shot across to Ari, a brow raising in curiosity. Fine. “Actually, I got something I need to share with you first.” Her hand shuffled inside her pocket pulling out the small, blue gem and setting it in front of her.
Ari might have commented on the book -- the fact that it had only just come out made it very unlikely that Aud had read it before -- but the moment the stone came out, before she could even recognize it for what it surely must be, she had already received confirmation in the form of something between a roar and a chuckle at the back of her mind, and she would have wondered at the mix of exasperation and fondness if she weren’t too shocked to care what Ifrit thought of anything at all.
“Don’t tell me,” she said, wide-eyed, “you went on an adventure after I left last night? I didn’t hear about anything else getting destroyed.”
The blonde shook her head, picking the stone back up and putting it in her pocket. “No, I’ve had her for a week. Fumiya had sent me to the outlands to search for some items, and I ran smack into her. Merri,” she paused trying to recall her name, “Mag? And some other guy were there too, thankfully. At the end of the fight, the gem came floating to me—it reminded me of Ifrit. Then came the headaches, I still have them. Then I could finally understand her. She’s insistent on teasing him about something.”
Ari bit back her immediate response -- and you didn’t tell me? -- reminding herself that it would likely be uncharitable to make a fuss over a week when compared with several months (even if the circumstances were entirely different -- she was unlikely to think Aud mad, considering she had lived this). Instead, she said, “Well, that’s… something,” struck momentarily speechless by the absurdity of this situation. She had to wonder how many of these things there were (it is irrelevant to you, hume child, all you need is me, was the ever-so-helpful interjection she received for her troubles). Finally, she said, “I suppose if she’s intent on teasing someone other than you, you’re doing better than me already. And wine’s as good a cure for unnatural headaches as any,” she decided. True, it would cause other sorts of headaches, but at least those would be easily explained away.
“Replace the supernatural with the natural, huh?” Audrey smirked, raising her glass to her friend. “To failing at love and listening to the voices in our heads,” toasting, she took a sip of her wine. “Faram, this is depressing. Look at us, look at our lives. Look at our choices.”
Ari made a face and gulped down the remaining liquid in her glass in one go. “That is depressing. What the hell is this, Aud? Last year I thought I knew everything. And now look at me.” She remembered well her easy, merry approach to twenty-five -- a card-carrying spinster now, world-weary and so on and so forth (with a laugh for those who actually believed these things of her) but canny and smart and capable. Now instead she was beginning to suspect she knew nothing at all.
This called for more wine.
“By the way,” she said, making a dent in her second class, “I demand your spinster badge -- wasn’t it a badge? -- back. Your husband may leave you alone in a cold bed to imagine Conrad and Isabella, but you’ve clearly betrayed the sisterhood.”
Audrey pulled back, as if holding something precious to her chest. “No, it’s mine!” she hissed playfully. “The marriage hasn’t been consummated. It isn’t real. I’m still a spinster. Spinsters for life!” Her hysterics brought her into a laugh as she rested her cheek on the palm of her hand. “Twenty-six sucks. Sucks nuts.”
“I’m one day in,” Ari said, “and I don’t even understand what is happening in my life, and I still have to agree. You need more wine,” she decreed. Somehow, the first bottle was empty already, so she went for the second. “So, your husband is… your husband and the really sexy white mage is an idiot. As for my life, Drake looks at me like I’m going to break, and Aspel looks like a deer caught in a hunter’s crosshairs if I try to get close to her, when she’s talking to me at all. Also, my mother keeps writing and telling me to come home, and Romulus and Juliana of all unlikely things made me cry every night for a month, I lived on nothing but ice cream for weeks, and got desperate enough to write to Dear Ellie in what I can only assume was a bout of temporary insanity.”
Right, breathing was a thing she ought to do.
“And having said all that aloud,” she concluded, “I’m going to get smashingly drunk on the afternoon of my birthday in Countess Genevieve Albrecht’s guest wing because I think I actually feel worse than I did when I started. Hearing voices barely factors in anymore, but then, I’ve had a year to get used to it, I suppose. It seems a minor problem, comparatively.”
Half-way through her rant, Audrey had already moved her chair closer to the bard and let her hand caress her back comfortingly as Ari let it all out. Taking a sip from the glass, she set it back down in front of her. “Leila once told me life is like a bow. You have to be drawn back before you can shoot forward. So I mean, if this is the worst it could get—which it isn’t—” she knocked on the wooden table, “then surely it’s going to get loads better, right?” It was difficult sometimes to believe in her own words, but she knew they held truth in them. They had to. “Time heals a lot of things, maybe Aspel just needs time.” Audrey played with her glass, “Personally I think Drake is better. He seems to cause you less heartache.”
“It isn’t about ‘better’ or ‘worse,’” Ari immediately disagreed, though she did lean into Aud’s side. “It’s -- how do I explain? Drake is Drake. Aspel is Aspel. They’re not… interchangeable. It’s completely different.” She looked down, swirling the wine in her glass as she added softly, “At least Aspel doesn’t seem to expect anything from me. Maybe that’s better. Or maybe it’s a nice excuse not to do anything about anything,” she finished on a sigh, thinking of Flynn’s recent lecture.
Ajora, her life.
“I suppose choosing one and dropping the other and letting things progress the way they might between normal humes would be the rational thing to do,” she conceded. “Except I never do the rational thing. Running the other direction is the other rational thing, and I can’t even convince myself to do that.”
“It sounds like you just want to run away from your problems instead of actually facing them.”
“My typical response to everything -- how well you know me,” Ari said with a grimace. “And people keep telling me that. But I’m still here and still trying. I’m not sure what I’m trying, but it has to count for something, right?”
“Well,” she took a drink, “you haven’t run away to Ordalia and left us all behind, so yes. That counts as something.” Audrey shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve spent a whole life time running away from problems. I suppose I’m not the best for advice. I don’t know Aspel well enough to know what’s going on in her life right now. Speaking of which, she still owes me a drink, but that’s for another time,” she grumbled. “I just think it’s funny Drake seems the most grounded when at first he was the least.”
“Funny, how people change when you’re not paying attention,” Ari mused. Then, “I am running off to Ordalia soon, you know. I told you. But I bought a round-trip ticket. Maybe I just need a brief change of scenery. I don’t know.”
Audrey grinned. “You know I’d drag you back by your hair in an instant.” Reaching for the wine bottle, she topped both of their glasses. “But yes, I think you need a change. Go, relax, think about it. Come back and solve your issues. Yes, I like this plan.”
“And while I’m gone, you can go have that drink with Aspel and beat her over the head with something.” Ari took another drink of wine as she admitted, “All right, so that part is probably a fantasy. And it should probably be a soft something. Pick a bar with throw pillows. I may have been drinking this wine too fast…”
Audrey stifled her laugh, hiding behind her hand. A shiver ran through her spine, reminding her of the message she was meant to deliver. “Shiva, that’s her name,” she interjected. “She wants to know, and I’m softening the language, if Ifrit is still a hot-headed idiot.”
The rapid change of subject combined with too much wine drunk too fast would have been enough to set Ari giggling, but the extreme indignance of Ifrit (and the choice words he had for a frosty -- well) added just the right touch to have her almost gasping with laughter. “Does she want his opinion, or mine?” she managed to ask.
All in all, it turned out to be a considerably better birthday afternoon than she’d anticipated.