InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I have to go"

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.

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

_ayla_
2008-09-24 01:05 pm UTC (link)

Ayla laughed softly and shook her blond head. "I had to learn very quickly when I was young. It has become a habit." She nodded again to his question, although it was more rhetorical than anything. "She's very pleasant. Her name is Yvaine. When she fell, she broke her leg. I found her shortly after."

She stopped when he seemed to have an epiphany. She listened, her brow furrowed slightly. She nodded with understanding. "I think I see what you mean. We call them spirits. Our spririts are intertwined with our totems. If our totem leaves us, our spirit dies."

She nodded again to his question. "Yes, I was still alive. My totem never left and my spirit was still inside my body. But the Clan thought I was an evil spirit, so they didn't look at me. They saw right through me, as if I wasn't there." Her voice was pained. It had been a horrible experience, but she knew it had been for the best. It was better for Durc, too. The Others thought he was an abomination.

She shook her head and continued to walk through the long rows of grape vines. "Why did you go back into the Lifestream?" She was curious about how he had died. She wasn't familiar with violence. It was a shameful act in the Clan to even speak harshly to another, unless it was a male speaking to a female. But if a man layed a hand on another man, it was as if he had killed him. It was unexcuseable.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

mothersbestson
2008-09-26 02:03 am UTC (link)

Kadaj filed away the information about the star's name for later. He supposed he might very well meet this Yvaine, considering how he had already met several people and most of them seemed to be females. Perhaps a star would like the look of his room where he had recreated a tiny portion of the Forgotten Forest with its white-glowing trees.

"Totem?" He looked at her quizzically. "Why would they think you're evil? I know you're not evil," he stated with a teen's brash confidence. Then he heard himself say something those who had known him during his previous life would find strange: "I'm sorry they shunned you. You don't deserve that." Well, Aerith would have liked this empathy...

Kadaj was glad to resume walking and even more happy to answer her question about the Lifestream. There was something familiar, a place in his soul that spoke easily and proudly: "I was killed in a fight with Big Brother. We had a history of being enemies even though we shared genes from an alien." He wondered if she would understand and he sighed. Even if she hadn't yet read about genetics and everything he pretty much took for granted that others would know about, they certainly had time to discuss all of it. Mirage didn't want to let them go.

"I'm from a military background. Fighting is most of my life." As he spoke, strolling along, he caressed the handle of his sword. He wondered where Xena was today and when they might spar again.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

_ayla_
2008-09-26 11:53 am UTC (link)

"The Clan believes that all spirits are evil, and want to take the living with them to the other side. If you acknowledge their presence, you can be vulnerable to their wiles and die yourself if you are not careful. It is best not to acknowledge their presence at all." She wondered how the best way to explain her totem would be. "Everyone born into the Clan is given a totem to protect them and help them make good decisions. My totem is the Cave Lion." She pulled the tie at her waist to loosen the leather leggings and pulled them down to show him the four parallel scars on her thigh. "He marked me here, see?"

She was probably far too free with her body, but she didn't see the act as anything sexual in nature and her tunic was long enough to conceal anything too revealing. She looked up at him as she bent at the waist, holding the waistband of her pants while he examined the scars, white against her naturally tanned skin. When she was satisfied that he'd been given a good look at them, she pulled her pants up and tied them back in place.

She sighed softly. She really hadn't deserved to be shunned, but she understood why she had been. "I was bad. I didn't do things the way the other Clan women did. I was too tall, too thin, too weak, too fair. My eyes watered, I made sounds they could not. I made them nervous. And I pushed the boundaries. I think that without realizing it, I was asking them to change. And the Clan cannot be changed." She shrugged. There was nothing that could be done about it now.

"A fight?" She winced. She knew what a fight was, of course. She had seen Broud push one of the men who was trying to teach him how to use a sling. He had been severely reprimanded for it, but she couldn't imagine a fight that would result in death. She imagined it was something like a predator stalking prey and killing it. It made her stomach churn just to think of a human being killing another one of their own.

She hadn't researched genetics and didn't know exactly what he meant, but she gathered from the way he said it that they were familiar in some way, sharing something from a source. "I am not familiar with 'military'. Why must you fight? Can your leader not settle the dispute?" She didn't know anything about warring territories or anything that would cause masses of people to fight each other. Nothing of true evil that meant people needed to die to preserve a better race. When she had lived with the Clan, it had been just them. There weren't enough people in the world to have to fight over land or power.

In the Clan it was about status. If the Clan leader said it must be done, then it would be done. There was no fighting about anything. It was a much simpler life, obviously. "I am sorry you have to fight." She gave him a small smile as they resumed their walking, eating the ripe grapes that pulled easily from the stem.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

mothersbestson
2008-09-26 01:28 pm UTC (link)

Kadaj listened and learned about Ayla from the natural innocence of her actions. Yes, he knew how people reproduced and had a lot of whispers in his memories about confusing human rituals, especially when it came to modesty and certain mores. If there was irony in the fact that he was just about the most perfect person to gaze upon her scars, he wouldn't know it. He just reacted in a similar manner to the way she behaved, easily keeping his reaction ingenuous. This was something he could have managed even if she had stripped, as long as she did it in her current mindset.

Though he did blink in surprise when she dropped her leggings. Her gaze up at him, however, quelled any human teen instinct he might have possessed. How easy it was to let the alien part dominate. Not to the point where he had to withdraw but just enough to accept her actions the way she meant them.

He considered what it really meant to the woman, having the Cave Lion for her totem when that was the creature which 'marked' her. And he didn't really get it, this young hybrid warrior who was certainly 'marked' with the cat eyes and white hair of Jenova.

Kadaj blinked again at Ayla's comments about being bad. "So you mean because you were different in appearance and actions, because you were simply being yourself, that made you bad. Hnn... can't be changed, sounds like Mother...."

How weird that she visably winced at the idea of fighting. While he could ignore the whole human sexual identity, battle and challenge always made his eyes glow more green. His pupils narrowed almost to the point of vanishing.

"So your society didn't go to war?" Kadaj mused. "I guess they dealt with things that scare them by shunning, like in your situation. Or if they came across different people, the behavior was cautious but not hostile, am I right? I guess my leader couldn't settle the dispute, if that's how you'd like to put it. But...."

He looked at her, wondering how to explain. "Don't be sorry I have to fight. It's something in me, I was created to fight... we don't shun what we think are bad spirits but we turn and battle them. I guess most people considered me and my brothers the bad spirits, if you want me to be honest. Except for the woman, the Ancient who took me by the hand when I died."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

_ayla_
2008-10-01 11:37 am UTC (link)

"I did things that they didn't like. I should have been a good Clan woman. I might still be with them now, if I had. I should never have started hunting. That made everything worse. And then when I wouldn't give Durc up... that really made them angry." There was a tonal quality to her voice that convyed the sorrow she felt at being cast out, even though she knew it was for the better. She never would have met Jondalar if she had stayed with the Clan. And he might have died if she hadn't been in the Valley at that time.

She shook her head at the question about the Clan going to war. "No. There was no war, no violence. Yes, caution and indifference, but no hostility." She furrowed her brows as he went on to explain that he was created to fight, that it was something he didn't mind and maybe even liked. Ayla nodded, putting another grape in her mouth.

She was nearly finished with the bunch in her hands and it was now mostly just a skeleton of naked stems. "Who are the Ancients? They sound important, but I don't understand why." She looked at him as they continued to walk down the seemingly endless rows of grapes. Bees zoomed around their heads, stopping on the sticky fruit and then flying away abruptly.

Her arms swung casually at her sides, long limbed and thin enough to hide the underlying strength. She had to be tough, not in the way a fighter had to be tough. But she had to endure, and have stamina that would allow her to accomplish all she had to in the daylight hours. "We had Mog-ur. He was the magician, the holy man of the Clan. Creb was special. His totem was the Cave Bear. It marked him when he was a child, the way my totem marked me. I lived at his hearth with Iza, his sister. Brun, the Clan leader was his brother." In all reality, that made Broud a kind of foster cousin to her. But he had never treated her with anything but distain. A fact that made her sad to think about.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Read comments) -