I Know You...

[DragonSong]

She looked at him quietly for a long moment before saying, "You don't have to tell me. If you don't want to."

She looked away, out over the fields. "I know some people here assume that Yoreiq is...some sort of paradise, where we never know a negative emotion or longing. It's not true--and I'm not so naive as to think everyone is so lucky as to have the kind of support of community that I had growing up."

She shrugged and glanced back to him. "So you don't have to tell me, whatever it is. Even if you think it would help us figure this out, I won't pry."

[MadEmperor]

"Maybe I will tell you everything; I should tell you. But... not today. This is--all happening too fast. I need time to wrap my head around this destiny bullshit."

He chuckled ruefully. "I told myself that there was no such thing. How could it when some reap rewards they didn't earn while others work all of their lives for nothing? I told myself that whatever I had to do to not be among the latter was justified."

"I learned the hard way that it wasn't. So I came here. That's... that's the simple version of things."

[DragonSong]

Nani nodded again. She'd meant what she'd said; she wouldn't pry.

With a short, unamused laugh, she noted, "I'm not sure which idea is less appealing—that destiny does exist, despite all the evidence that it shouldn't and it treats some folks like dirt...or that it only exists for some people."

She huffed, ruffling her wings slightly. "I always thought...I suppose I never really looked at it from a wider view. I just knew there was something that I had to do, somewhere I had to go, someone to find...it didn't occur to me that if I felt that way, it meant there was some force creating the feeling. It's always just been...part of me."

[MadEmperor]

Ein thought for a bit and decided opening up just a little more couldn't hurt. "I actually know what that feels like, having this feeling you can't explain other than that it's part of you."

"I've never felt like I'm in my own skin, like I'm meant to look different, or even be something different. I just know this--" He motioned to himself. "-- isn't me."

[DragonSong]

"Really?" She blinked at him, both oddly touched that he would share something like that and now also quite curious.

She smiled gently, cautiously. "Perhaps we are more alike than we thought."

[MadEmperor]

Ein laughed heartily despite himself. "Perhaps we are, at that!"

"And we should really get back to work before the day is wasted," he added, rising to his feet.

[DragonSong]

Nani got to her feet as well with a quick nod and another, slightly less cautious smile.

"Right! Where do you need me?"


Farm life agreed with her, in a way she hadn't expected. She liked the animals, and the physical labor was oddly rewarding in its own way. She would be tired and sore after a full day, but in a way that felt earned.

She was also learning to cook; she'd been handy enough in a kitchen back on Yoreiq, but mainland ingredients were so foreign to her that before Ein's hospitality had allowed her to stay in one place she hadn't had any idea what to do with them.

"No," she told Vander without making eye contact with the puppy eyes he was giving her as she kneaded dough.

He whined, and she repeated with a laugh, "No. You've already had your scraps from breakfast—and this is raw dough, you don't want this!"

The dog whined again. Clearly, he disagreed.

[MadEmperor]

"Spoiled beast," Ein chuckled heartily as he returned with some fresh apples from the market in town.

The man had yet to open up any further, but he had gradually warmed up to having her around. In fact, he rather appreciated having an extra pair of hands; it made things much easier than insisting on doing everything alone. Grudgingly, he admitted to himself that the company wasn't so bad either.

Setting down his haul, he said, "How many do you think we need? I've never made a pie either."

[DragonSong]

"Mmmm..." Nani leaned over the counter and squinted. "The recipe says...six to eight?" She blinked. "Well--that's maddeningly unhelpful. That's two whole apples of difference!"

Looking back at him, she shrugged and laughed a little. "I guess seven? That's right in the middle."

Vander was sniffing at his master's boots, clearly intrigued by the smell of the market. Nani smiled at the sight before asking, "Did you find everything alright?"

She had been sent on an unsupervised market trip once herself--just the once, as she had been thoroughly distracted by the sheer volume of offered goods that she didn't recognize, and had wound up returning with only half the appropriate shopping and two armfuls of odds and ends they didn't need. It had become something of a joke for her to ask Ein--who was significantly more familiar with the place--if he had had any trouble.

[MadEmperor]

"Yeah. Though, if I had gone any slower, the apples would have run out. Apparently, the orchard had a bad harvest this season. Some kind of tree rot Blackstone hasn't seen before." Ein sighed worriedly. "I just hope it doesn't spread to other crops. A lot of us aren't prosperous enough to take the hit."

[DragonSong]

Nani winced slightly. "A rot? That sounds...bad."

She glanced out the window of the farmhouse at the fields before refocusing her attention on shaping the dough in front of her. "Won't the farmers help each other, though?" she asked as she worked. "I mean, if it does spread--some of the fields around here are massive, surely even with a bad harvest the community could support itself?"

Despite all the time she'd now spent on the mainland, it was still difficult for her to conceptualize the idea of farming as an occupation, something that one did for profit as much as sustenance.

[MadEmperor]

"Some will help each other, some won't. We mainlanders aren't as community-minded as your people, some less than others," Ein answered with a hint of apology in his voice.

His own actions in the past were more selfish than she had experience with which to compare. He couldn't help but wonder what she might think of him—what she would think of him—when she learned the truth.

"Most people are more concerned about how much they think the world owes them than how they can help each other."

[DragonSong]

Though it wasn't the first time someone had tried to explain that to her since she'd left home, each time struck her anew. Nani sighed, pausing in her work of arranging the pie crust in a dish.

"I just..." She bit her lip. She knew to most mainlanders it would sound naive, but... "It just seems so sad," she murmured. "I can't even think--I know things are different here than they are on the islands," she murmured. "The world is just...different. There are people who have power here, but no incentive to use it well. It's just...hard to wrap my head around, sometimes."

[MadEmperor]

"I never said it was a good arrangement. But people are good at one thing above all else: convincing ourselves they've done nothing wrong. While, at the same time, we blame ourselves for things that actually aren't our fault."

"We're all a bit mad, if you ask me." He shrugged slightly as he started preparing the apples.

[DragonSong]

"...I suppose." Nani lapsed into silence for a while as they worked. It was a not unpleasant habit she'd fallen into with Ein; working alongside one another but not really talking. She had a feeling it was a combination of their natures and the rather dramatic topic that neither of them ever really wanted to bring up, but all in all it resulted in a typically comfortable quiet.

After a few minutes, she moved around him to get at the spice rack--and accidentally clipped his shoulder with the edge of her wing.

"Oh! Sorry." She shot him a sheepish look--it was certainly not the first time something like that had happened. She drew her wings in tighter to her back in an effort to minimize the space they occupied. "Did I hurt you?"

[MadEmperor]

"I'm afraid I'm a tad more durable than that," he answered; his response was usually something along those lines. While it was true that he hadn't particularly built his home with the intent of sharing it, he had made it generally large enough for a second person. However, he did not account on that person having wings.

After some more of that companionable silence, they eventually slid their creation into his wood-fueled stove to cook.

"So..." He sat with a groan, relieved to sit for a moment. "What do you think the chances are our first attempt at pastry doesn't turn out a disaster?"

[DragonSong]

"Mmmmm." She tapped a finger to her lips in thought dramatically. "I'd say...coin flip? The herb bread last week turned out okay, but that roast..."

Suffice to say, her first attempt at a roast had not exactly been an unqualified success.

[MadEmperor]

"I thought we agreed never to speak of that again," he quipped with a teasing smirk. "Or the life sacrificed in vain to spawn that vile creation."

[DragonSong]

Nani groaned and leaned back on her chair, throwing one arm over her face theatrically.

"It's a pitty you're such a well-behaved dog, Vander," she told the hound balefully. "Aside from the begging. Otherwise I would sic you on your master for his cruel teasing."

The dog's tail thumped against the door and his tongue lolled as he looked up at them with his ears perked.

[MadEmperor]

"You couldn't eat it either, could you, boy?" Ein chuckled softly as he reached down to pet the dog.

Vander released a happy groan and leaned into the attention.

"See? He's on my side," he said smugly.