InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Say it."

Kadaj (mothersbestson) wrote in mirage_rpg,
@ 2008-09-15 16:51:00

Entry tags:

ayla, complete, day 15, kadaj

Day 15
Who: Kadaj and Ayla
When: Day 15 evening
What: Seeing A Familiar Face
Where: A bench looking toward the vineyard
Rating: G
Status: In progress

He sat on the bench, his chin resting on his right gloved hand while the left loosely held the sword hilt that stuck out of the scabbard. Shifting his elbow off the belt buckle around his thigh without raising his head, Kadaj stared at the orderly lines of the vineyard fields. He didn't have any real answers regarding the planet but all he wondered about was the footprints to be seen here and there in the dirt.

Perhaps he needed to go eat something in the restaurant or maybe just sleeping would be good. Sighing, he put his face into both his hands. His white hair hung down over the black fingers. He thought about the fact that there were dreams during sleep now. His mind jumped from subject to subject in a random fashion because he didn't want to dream just then. What good was it when he had to wake up after seeming to be alive again on Gaia, or after being back in the Lifestream? Like all the stolen people he'd met to date, he didn't want to be here.

Someone approached, his senses warned. Had he been where he belonged, he would have looked up... No, he wouldn't have even been sitting amongst green, growing things so it didn't matter.

Kadaj just continued sitting there holding his head in his hands.

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mothersbestson
2008-09-15 09:04 pm UTC (link)

The voice saying his name with curious concern, he knew that voice.... Kadaj had to think for a heartbeat but he placed it back to his first day when the hurricane had raged.

He looked at her from between his fingers for a moment. This peekaboo wasn't a game, however, as his eyes were serious. Dropping his hands and raising his head so that the shiney silver hair flowed back, he studied Ayla's comfortable leather clothes. She wore the same material as him but her look was very different. The clothes suited her in their casual appeal. As did the long hair in a braid. He was reminded of Aerith's hair that had also been braided. She didn't look like Aerith but the expression on her face was familiar, one of concern even when she glowed with health and inner strength.

"Ayla," he greeted softly, realising both this blonde and and brunette Aerith were beautiful. This woman would not tell him lies. Not that he thought any of the other women he met had but he simply felt this by looking at Ayla. Merely by being there she communicated it without having to speak nor to prove it any other way.

It occurred to him that perhaps speaking to her without Anakin there would make a great difference.

"What do you think of the change?" he asked, waving his hand in the direction of the new terrain covered in ordered rows of vines.

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_ayla_
2008-09-16 11:33 am UTC (link)

Ayla's light brown eyebrows rose when he peeked out from between his fingers. He wasn't playing a game like the one she'd played with Durc when he was a child. He looked...upset. His hands dropped and he lifted his head and greeted her. It was a greeting she was more familiar with. None of this "Hello" or "Hi", no shaking hands.

As he looked at her, she gazed right back, her blue eyes steady and unwavering. But after a moment, it occured to her that it was impolite to stare. At least, it was in her world. A world where people spoke with their hands and staring constituted eavesdropping. When he gestured to the land around them, she turned to look at it.

"It is strange that the land changes so abruptly. I have seen changes in the land before. Floods and glaciers displace land and make it look different every season. But, this is overnight and such a dramatic change. It is a little frightening, but I like the look of it very much." She turned back to him. "What do you think of it?"

She turned back to look at the grapevines as he answered. When he finished, she asked another question. "Do you know what that fruit is over there?" She pointed out the grapevines that she had been headed for before she had paused in front of the white haired youth. "I have never seen it before." There were many things in Mirage she had never seen before, and she craved knowledge like a drug. She wanted to learn all she could about the things around her. Especially if she was to live here for long.

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mothersbestson
2008-09-16 12:15 pm UTC (link)

He had no idea at all how impolite it was in her culture to look directly at others. Her thought about this wasn't something Kadaj could read in her demeanor. Ayla seemed to know the value of studying someone closely as far as he could tell.

"It's startling, yes, but not frightening to me," he said, "how quickly it's changed. I can't say I've seen floods but I know what you mean by glacier." And there was Meteor almost destroying the world. But that memory filtered through Sephiroth's past action wasn't relevent just now. He shook his head slightly as if shaking it harder would harm the delicate balance of his knowledge learned from many different minds. But he wasn't immersed in the Lifestream any more, which it occurred to him made him feel disadvantaged.

Kadaj watched her as she looked at the vines growing on the hilly terrain. He stood up as she pointed to the grapevines. With a slight smile and a tilt of his head in the direction where she pointed, he invited: "Let's go see".

His mind searched his memories. Initially he wasn't sure if he knew what the fruit was but there was a snippet of thought as if someone had seen, perhaps eaten, the....

"Grapes," he said suddenly as he walked toward the vines. "They're grapes." This seemed to lighten his mood somewhat.

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_ayla_
2008-09-17 10:38 am UTC (link)

Ayla looked down for a moment when he spoke, but she mostly looked toward the grapevines. She fairly beamed when he suggested they go find out what kind of fruit it was. She started walking when he stood up and looked back when he announced what kind they were.

She'd never heard the word before but she could see by his body language that he wasn't lying to her. Testing the word out, she said it aloud. "Grapes." She beamed again and quickened her pace. She soon found herself running in between two rows of the thick leafy vines.

It smelled glorious. She had a predator's senses. Overdeveloped from necessity. She dropped into a crouch and looked up under one of the vines, spying a clump of the big red globes. She reached for it and tried to pull it off, but the vine was green and did not give. She pulled a flint knife from a pouch at her waist and sawed through the vine before standing up and holding the cluster up to the sun.

The light filtered through the juicy fruit and Ayla grinned. She plucked one from the stem and popped it in her mouth. She chewed for a moment the way she always did when testing new plants or vegetation. There was no bitter taste, nothing that would indicate poison, nothing that set alarm bells off in her head to spit it out. It was sweet and juicy. It filled her mouth with an explosion of new flavor. She relished it, closing her eyes and swallowing with a little bit of a groan.

"These are delicious." She shoved the cluster of grapes at him, imploring him to have some.

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mothersbestson
2008-09-17 03:45 pm UTC (link)

Kadaj watched the woman with interest bordering on awe at how she reacted to the environment of the vineyard. What he viewed as an orderly, rather boring exploitation of farmed food was obviously something quite different to her.

He thought Ayla reacted like an innocent animal taking revelry in sunlight. Just the fact she smiled like that at learning they were called 'grapes' told volumes about her. But wait, she wasn't naive after all. Getting closer to the clusters of fruit made her happy too yet she tasted one of the red globes carefully. Her enjoyment following the first taste was a reaction not quite like any he had seen before.

Reaching out, he plucked one of the round fruits from the cluster almost warily, rolling it between thumb and forefinger. Kadaj held it up to also see how it looked in the sunlight. There were memories whispering in his mind, telling him that it was good. Shrugging slightly, he popped the globe in his mouth. It slid over his tongue smoothly. The skin gave easily between his teeth and the flavour of fresh sweetness was better than he anticipated.

"Hn, delicious," he agreed, gazing at the lines of vines converging to a point on the horizon. "I assume you've never seen so many plants like this? I know I haven't." He wouldn't have had this conversation on his world before he died and the thought amused him somewhat.

Reaching out, he broke another heavy bunch of grapes off the vine.

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_ayla_
2008-09-19 11:07 am UTC (link)

For one who was used to foraging for food, rows upon rows of this delicious fruit was like finding a treasure trove. In her world, Ayla had to memorize where things grew and remember to return there the next year to pick the small apples or berries. Farming had not yet been thought of, and it amazed her to see so many of these plants in the same place.

She was careful not to eat too many of the large bulbous fruits, and limited herself to only the single bunch she'd cut from the vine. She took her time, and savored each one, as if she would never be able to eat them again. Although, she knew that wasn't true. This current look of the restort would be around for at least six more days if her calculations of previous changes were correct.

"I wonder how these would taste if they were dried." She contemplated harvesting a good amount of them to dry for storage in her cave-like room. She could eat them whenever she wanted if she dried enough. She speculated that, like any other dried fruit, it would be a little sweeter when dried. The concentration of the sweet juices when the water was evaporated out of them was always much stronger than when one ate the fruit fresh.

Shaking her head, she addressed his question. "No, I haven't seen so many plants in one place like this. Usually I have to go hunting for the plants. This is much more convenient." She imagined what life would have been like back in the valley if she'd had her plants all lined up like this. It would have been much easier than roaming for miles over the open plains to find the plants she needed. She imagined she would have had more time for other things, though what, she wasn't sure.

She watched him take his own bunch of grapes and grinned. So he liked them, too. She was glad. She always liked to see people enjoying their food. And she couldn't think of a single thing she didn't like to eat herself. Mostly, her food was fuel efficient and gave her energy throughout the day. Dried berries, oats and animal fats mashed together into dried cakes were good traveling food. She'd made those plenty of times.

"Kadaj? I would like to hear more about your Lifestream. Would you mind telling me about it?"

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mothersbestson
2008-09-19 07:20 pm UTC (link)

"I don't mind," he agreed and popped another grape into his mouth. Like before, he savoured biting into it and the combination of sweet yet slightly tart flavours that rushed over his taste buds.

"My world is called Gaia," he began by way of introduction. "I guess it's like a lot of planets that support life. Though this is the only other planet I've been on to date." He ate another grape and looked at the young woman, who didn't appear taller than him. With the exception of children and Claire Bennet, Kadaj was used to most people being taller, even his own brothers. It was nice to gaze at Ayla at eye level. He didn't even consider her being barefoot and his thick-soled boots which made them about equal in height.

He started walking between the neat rows slowly, looking to see if she accompanied him. Something about the vinyard and the weather actually made him feel relaxed. He almost considered removing his gloves as he plucked another grape from the bunch in his hand.

"The Lifestream... it's like the blood of the planet. It's not red, not even really physical in the same way. Some consider it the soul of Gaia. Others used it to power our cities," he explained. He wasn't sure what she might understand as surely as he realised they were from very different environments. But she would surely ask what she wanted to know.

"The Lifestream is where we go when we die and I was there before Mirage stole me."

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_ayla_
2008-09-22 11:10 am UTC (link)

As she ate her grapes, she listened to Kadaj tell her about his world. She found it hard to comprehend some things because she couldn't relate them to anything in her own world, but she loved stories and still found it fascinating.

In all reality, Ayla was nearly five inches taller than Kadaj, but out of habit, she stooped. She had been taller than the men of the Clan, and they didn't like having to look up to a woman, so she stooped to be closer to their height and so that she could look up to them. Kadaj's tall boots, though, helped the situation so she didn't have to stoop too far.

As he walked, she turned to walk with him, continually plucking the juicy globes from the cluster in her hand. She listened, nodding her head from time to time. She was very attentive and would probably be able to repeat back to him everything he was telling her verbatim because of the habit she had picked up as a child. Memorization had been a huge key to her survival in the Clan.

"By power, you mean the same way Mirage is powered? With e-lec-tricity?" Ayla had been one of the first people on Mirage and as such had had plenty of time to research things she didn't understand in the library. Along with stealing her from her own world, the Planet apparently gave her the ability to read modern text. It was a miracle, considering she came from a time where there was no written word.

So she had read up on electricity, and comprehended as much as she could, though there was still so much she didn't grasp. "Creb said that the people who died in our world went up to sit around the hearth fires in the sky." She pointed upward with a finger stained slightly purple from the grapes she was eating. "Death confuses me. To the Clan I am dead, but my body never stopped working the way Iza's did." She frowned, wishing that she understood better. She hated not understanding.

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mothersbestson
2008-09-22 06:06 pm UTC (link)

Kadaj nodded, feeling more than a bit of curiosity about Ayla now that they had started talking in a meaningful manner. Really, she reminded him a little of himself when he'd been in the Lifestream and using the experience to answer his own questions.

"Yes we had electricity. Who told you about it here?"

He listened to her talk about her past, trying to learn from her inflections as well as her words. "Hearth fires in the sky... is that what you thought of when you saw stars on your world?" he wondered while they wandered the peaceful vineyard setting. Popping the grapes in his mouth and eating seemed to improve the way he felt. He could go for longer than most without food but whenever he boasted he didn't need to eat, that was major exaggeration.

"You leave your body when you die." He vaguely knew from others' thoughts that their bodies went into the Lifestream too yet they weren't physical in the same way as they had been. "Do you mean the Clan shunned you?"

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_ayla_
2008-09-23 11:42 am UTC (link)

"No one told me. I wanted to know what they were, and when I went into the big room with all the books, I started looking through them. After a long time, I found out that encyclopedias have a lot of information in them. I read about electricity and light bulbs in the encyclopedias." She had to learn a lot of things on her own, but it was nothing different from the way she'd lived in the Valley.

"That's what Creb said they were, hearth fires for the people who had gone from this life. But I met a star, and she is not a hearth fire." Ayla was sometimes more confused than educated on certain things. Those encyclopedias had also said that stars were balls of gas. But Yvaine didn't look like a ball of gas to her.

"What do you mean we "leave" our bodies when we die? Isa looked the same, her body just stopped working. We buried her in the ground and piled rocks on top of her. But when I died, my body did not stop working. But no one could see me, they thought I was an evil spirit. They wanted me to go away."

It always made her stomach thrum with hurt when she thought about being cast out by the Clan. Having to leave her child behind, and everyone that she knew and loved. She pushed the memories away, though. She was trying to figure things out, and talking with Kadaj was helping.

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mothersbestson
2008-09-23 08:09 pm UTC (link)

He had never had to use a library nor a database, at least not in the consciousness who called himself Kadaj. But like with a lot else, he had memories of doing so, mostly from Sephiroth's time of schooling as a youth in this instance. Considering how wherever Ayla came from existed without electricity, she had done absolutely brilliantly for herself so far.

"You have to be very smart to learn all that," Kadaj complimented. Interesting that she had spent time educating herself rather than hiding or desperately seeking to leave.

"You met a star who's a person? Really? I think I'd like to meet an actual star." Kadaj believed her but he had other comments to make: "At least I think we leave our bodies. The spark of life, the soul, the Lifestream is inside our bodies. Ah..." He stopped and turned to look at her, looking into her eyes. "It's something like a light bulb. You can see the light of life in someone's eyes and then it goes out when they die. But the bulb is still there when the light is off." He didn't go into how on his world the bodies usually vanished too since it would just confuse his point right then.

"And was it your people declaring you had died but you knew you were still alive?" he wondered.

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