Closed A Complex Reunion

[Matthew]

He nodded slowly, doing his best to wrap his mind around her words and resonate with him. After all these years of blocking off emotions as they rose, it was hard to really connect with other people on an emotional level. He wasn't opposed to doing it, but it was simply so very foreign to him. He didn't have a father that he felt that way about, so it was useless to reflect on his own experiences. His father was of course loving and kind, but Matthew simply didn't care for the man. It was almost cruel, really. He didn't have any major logical reason, there had been no real falling out... he simply didn't like him. Perhaps there was bitterness somewhere inside of him, or maybe he was simply sullen, or perhaps he was just a spoiled brat. He didn't know. He just knew that Litani's words rang hollow in him, and he had to struggle to try and see things from her point of view. In the end, he reverted back to understanding things how he normally did. It was easy to understand that she had adored her father, and rightfully so. He sounded like a wonderful man. There was a bond due to his love, and that is why she was so very happy to talk about him. That is why she was so sad to see him go. It all made sense, when it was broken down in pieces that he would read from like a book. A book explaining the dynamics of a person who had lost their loved father. Chewing his lip, he felt both a sense of satisfaction and an odd sense of unease. It had been awhile since he had been approached with such an emotional confession. She hadn't really shown any major emotion, though he had been able to see the sadness and happiness. The words were just so very heavy. Blue eyes snapped towards her at the next words she spoke. Work together, she said. Was he still going to be coming to help out Alder after this? Or would he make him help her over and over, meaning that his cleaning day would turn into something much more tormented? His eyes followed the movement of her long legs and curvy hip as she shifted, but then quickly corrected themselves back to her face. She hadn't paid him to look there, so why was he doing it? Instead, he simply focused, brow furrowing a bit in a look of concentration. Focus calmed him. Stilled him. Helped him remember the ice, the island, and the comfort that he found within it. Alder was the focus of her story, and he found himself listening closely. This would solve the puzzle completely, though he had put most of the pieces together already. He ordered the timeline in his head, creating a visual image of her journey with Alder deep within his mind. He was ready to push the pieces together when she paused, suddenly changing directions with a laugh. His brow furrowed even further, and he quietly stared at her, blinking a bit as something in stomach twisted. He was painfully familar with each of her noises. The sounds in his dreams matched the ones she made here, which was completely impossible. He had practically imagined the sound of that laugh before it had actually spilled from her lips. It was all too painfully surreal, and it made his head ache. Absently, he drifted over a small distance from her, sitting down gracefully on a small patch of grass near the hot spring shore. Observing the burdock she produced for him, he turned to one of his own, gently reaching down to pluck off some of the leaves. On his first try, he broke the plant, and his eyes glanced quickly to her with a brief look of dismay. Then, he tried again on another, much more delicate with his fingertips now, carefully and quietly plucking the tiny leaves and gathering them in a little pile for himself. At the sight of her fingers inviting and beckoning, another memory flashed to mind. She had done that motion once before. Many times before. He was painfully intimate with it as well. Catching the tone in her words, he stiffened a bit, eyes staring at her hand with some sort of distant glaze to the blue. He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it, then tried again. "I would like to learn. Thank you for teaching me again." He didn't move though, keeping his distance, though he did flinch a bit at his choice of words. Had that been casual, or had he been responding to her subtle daring? He wasn't sure. He hated not being sure. He would be sure of himself if he didn't have a bunch of confusing things swirling deep inside of his stomach. Thankfully, she seemed to pick up on something, and continued on with her story about Alder. He latched onto that, going back to another comfort zone, the place where he put together the little puzzles he came across. What an interesting story. He could see why they were the way they were. Forbidden by age, forbidden by family. Didn't that just make it that much more alluring to them? He had dealt with the forbidden before. He actually didn't like involving himself in established relationships, and had only done it once or twice in his early years. There were too many complications when someone came to him in secret, with a husband on the side. He had even had husband and wife both come to him, but even that could be messy. One would break down in the middle of it, and then it was just... bad. But, even with that stuff looming overhead, people still liked it. Mortals liked the forbidden. Liked to reach out and touch in, almost as if in delighted rebellion. "I am glad you are content in the life you have found. It sounds like your years have been exciting. Some good, some bad. I have not done nearly as much. Traveled here and there to practice my craft, and then eventually settled here to try and pursue it. Try and turn it into something better, bigger, more. Nothing exciting at all. Just different from most. You meet a lot of interesting people when you are a harlot. Would you believe it has started to reach a point where more people want to me to teach them seduction than people who want me to bed them? I can't tell if I should be pleased or not. And then, some like their hair combed, some like massages, some just like to talk... I try to offer more. Set myself apart." After some hesitation, he reached inside of his pocket and withdrew a little piece of paper. Leaning over, he set the card on the ground beside the basket for her to grab, and gingerly deposited his gathered burdock before settling back to pick more. "I even made an advertisement for myself." Business Card :

[Litani]

There was a delicate wall of glass which existed in the space between, its edge cutting so perfect in fine-grained crystal that it could barely exist at all; neither seemed eager to acknowledge it, perhaps neither were sure if they truly wanted to - or could - look beyond it. It stood proud and powerful against all the things they’d known of one another, all the things they’d done to one another in the black intimacy of unconsciousness... yet for all its profound division, it was as delicate as sun-lace, shattered with a single thought. With the right word. With a tiny scale. That scale blazed into Litani’s mind as Matthew so dispassionately described his... ‘craft’. She’d been trying to negotiate that glittering, hypnotising wall that sat in the middle of their conversation. She’d been trying to think of a way over, around it, even under the edges. Even a little. But the longer he spoke, the more she had this dread feeling of a knife slipping into her stomach... deeper, inch by inch, with every word. Her blue eyes suddenly lost their gleam, her hands froze amongst the leaves, and her gaze stopped seeing the spring. Stopped seeing everything but a twisting haze within. For all he knew her, inside and out, for all the intimacy of their dream... what he did in reality was a deep miscalculation. She’d been trying to share something of her life, something to lighten the grievous tension between them, something to distract them both. Trying to get to know him again, to set him at ease. Yet instead, he had smashed through her tenuous ability to ignore what he’d done to himself and thrown the reality of it right at her feet, into the basket with herbs on the ground. That did it. That snapped the threads that held her back from thinking about it, stopped her from envisioning someone else’s hands on him, from thinking that something as meaningless as coin could get anything from him. Everything, for the right price. He’d put himself up for sale and didn’t even think twice about it. Her King... for sale to anyone who came asking. That scale all but burned. She shook her head at herself, frustrated beyond words. Something about the appearance of a tiny, godsforsaken business card had triggered an unstoppable cascade of complicated feelings - self-derision chief among them, but also longing... lust... disappointment... anger. That she had dreamed true with Viper had her almost believing that the same might just be true with Matthew, that she might be wearing that scaled scar for a fated reason. She thought back to when she’d done it to herself, when she’d embedded the mark of that haunting dream in her own flesh to remind her... And even if it was true, idiot, what do you possibly have to compare against the flesh of a thousand women all paying for the privilege of being his lover...? What did you think, that he’d walk out of a dream, into your house, and seeing you would... what? Do something that was barely there eight years ago? And why? Because you dreamed about him? ….no. Because of what he said... in those dreams. Because of what he did. That’s why I hoped. That’s why I wanted. Well, obviously he didn’t mean a word. Obviously it was just a dream. And even if he dreamt it too... obviously it’s not enough. ...to remind her not to give up until she’d found someone she could belong to. Someone who’d treat her better than all her mother’s failed endeavours - failures that had eventually cost her everything. Someone who wouldn’t just use her as another pair of hands, eyes, and legs. Someone who wanted her. Obviously not enough. After a long moment spun itself into the silent thoughts of the now brooding Konti, Litani raised her eyes back to Matthew’s as she set a few of the leaves into the basket. An odd transformation passed across her features - like the remnant of a stormcloud drifting away on a strong atmospheric wind... leaving behind only the calm blue sky of soft irises, the flickering sun of a very faint smile. She was burying everything she felt and everything she wanted with a regretfully common trick she’d had to learn over the years of solitude... Quietly, at last, she dared cast a final stone at that shuddering glass wall. “And just what would it cost me,” she asked, glancing back down at the basket and moving the card back closer to him without looking at it, “for a night with the King of my dreams?”

[Accolade]

Matthew

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Observation	+ 3 XP
Interrogation	+ 3 XP
Socializing	+ 5 XP

Lores

•	Lore Earned
•	Alder: slave driver
•	Litani: Girl of dreams
•	Litani's story
•	Offering of affections: Litani

Notes :

Interesting thread, would have liked to see it go further. Litani, I will add your grade when you update your ledger.

The Sylir has spoken

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, please send me a PM and we can figure it out.