"It really is beautiful, here," Lune remarks, her pen scratching against paper as she scribbles another line onto her notebook. Her glamoured hair has been braided, the tail hanging down her shoulder as she bows her head over the pages and reveals the reason why it's so tightly bound; it gets in the way if left loose, annoying her.
"The biome is lovely in the Sirena territory too, but here it's like an eternal summer. I do wonder how the regions maintain such localized, steady climate... Do you think we'll run into that rabbit?"
There's barely a pause in between the two different thoughts, her mind busy in the way she loves best, puzzling over things. Lune's already filled several pages of her notebook in the time they've been wandering the wilds, unconcerned about the concept of potentially encroaching another court's territories.
Sciel loves summer. Even better to take advantage of it now, when the've undoubtedly got winter ahead of them in Etraya, and when the Umbraean court's castle is so drafty and cool without thousands of fae bodies thrumming within it. It's much more pleasant to stop for Lune's notes and drawings when it's warm, too; she sprawls out in the grass, her skin sun-warm and freckled, and she plucks blades of grass one by one, idly pinching their stalks and dragging her fingers upwards until all the florets bundle between her fingertips. She lets them go on the wind, and smiles sidelong at Lune.
"That Caerbannog thing?" She mangles that name, but close enough. "I'd like to see what it would try on us. It's been so many weeks since we had an actual fight that I'd be disappointed if it was even a hair smaller than a Stalact. And on that note, do you think Monoco's station ever melts out?"
"Hm— doubtful. It is far enough up North. Those walls of ice and snow seemed very thick." Lune shrugs a shoulder, her pen scratching some more. "But I guess it's not impossible, given some anomaly in the temperatures. I imagine the Grandis would leave and move higher up into the mountains if it ever did."
Too high up for humans, probably. It's a sad thought, thinking of those wise, melancholy creatures losing more than they already have. Finished with her notes for now, Lune looks up and sideways at Sciel from her own spot on the grassy knoll, smiling.
"You know," she points with her pen at the longer grasses swaying in the wind. "If you hold one of those wider blades taut between the gap of your thumbs and blow on it, it makes a really loud whistle."
"I suppose if it got that warm up there, the rest of us would be cooking, too," she says. At leas the Grandis could move; imagine Sirène, arid and hot enough to make Maelle's nose and cheeks tomato red in ten minutes flat, even harsher than it already is.
Sciel sits up, following the line of Lune's pen, looking for the grasses. She gets off her bottom walks on her knees the few feet she needs to go to pluck two big, fat blades, and she brings them back with a grin. She holds one out on offer.
Lune tucks her pen between the pages and sets the notebook on the ground beside her, breathing a small chuckle as she accepts the blade from Sciel. Lune draws the wide blade between her thumb and index finger, slowly and carefully; remembering doing this as a child and accidentally cutting her finger on the thin edge, surprisingly sharp.
"My sister. When we were kids." When there was still time and space for silly, childish things, when they weren't so driven apart by differing viewpoints. The small smile that tugs at her lips is wistful, maybe even a little sad, but she places the blade of glass lengthwise between her slender thumbs and brings them to her lips.
The sound that emerges is a shrilly ascending, ear-piercing ppffffiiiuuuu, and Lune stops to laugh at the horrible sound. Just the kind that used to drive her parents crazy when she did this with Stella, all those years ago. She blows again, this time more slowly; the sound is less grating this time, more recognizable as a whistle, carrying across the tree-littered hill.
Sciel watches her set it up, copying the gestures up until Lune blasts off that sound. She grins at that -– it’s nice to see Lune enjoying herself, reminiscing. Of course Lune was younger once, but sometimes it’s hard to imagine she was ever small or child-like, not when she gives off the impression that she came out of the womb knowing how to hold a pen, or what makes the world tick.
“Incredible,” she remarks, and she raises her own thumbs to her mouth and blows, and just gets a sort of weird spurting sound, her own breath between her own fingers. She laughs, and then is laughing too much to immediately try again. “You know, all the time I spent with plants, I was never thinking, I wonder what’ll happen if I blow on it.”
Sciel isn't far off thinking that. These moments of actual child-like glee are few and far between in Lune's memory. When the other kids were out playing, she was learning how to take notes, among other things. Lune laughs too at Sciel's attempt and her subsequent mirth, a small grin lingering on her lips.
"So, you learned something new today." She sounds amused and pleased in equal measure.
"I almost always learn something new with you, you know," she says, grinning, and then she gives it another go –– it's better, closer this time, but then again, she's never been much of a whistler to begin with.
Just as well that she has someone to learn from now, too, given how much of her own schooling she'd used as an opportunity for socializing, rather than learning.
Lune smiles, if maybe a touch wanly. She remembers frustrating her teachers with her questions in school, often surpassing her classmates with the breadth of her knowledge— and yet for all her precociousness, it never seemed to be quite enough. You can always do better, her parents impressed upon her. Pushing the thought away, she blows once more into her own blade of grass, the sound dredged out almost trumpeting, before discarding the piece with a small hum.
"Have you spoken with Verso lately?" she asks out of the blue, curious.
Sciel smiles, trying once more before watching Lune abandon her own. She keeps hers trapped between her thumbs, the reed of grass stretched taut. The moment's passed; she feels a little sad for it, watching that rare glimpse of a carefree Lune slip away again, but she'll be back.
"Sure have," she says.
Before Auriel, it was regular trips out to Camp with a backpack full of supplies and an itch to spend time with him, worried that he'd come around less if he thought he was intruding on them. Here it's a little more casual: crossing paths on neutral territory, mid-revelry, whenever it suits them.
"He looks good with white hair. It's such a shame he's so self-conscious about it."
"Mm. It's not a bad look on him," Lune muses. She can admit that! "Perhaps it's more so a way to distance himself from Renoir, rather than simple vanity."
She pauses before she gets carried away with idle speculations, tilting her head and giving Sciel a sidelong glance. "How did he seem to you, otherwise?"
What a shame to have such a beautiful colour ruined by such a miserable man, but she supposes that’s a rare treasure of everyone dying young; white hair on a young body is so striking, even novel.
As for Verso’s mood:
“Here and there. Less panicked, certainly, but he’s good at rallying,” she says, setting the blade of grass on her thigh and leaning back on both hands. Less outward panic doesn’t mean much when he’s had time to compose himself, and settle into a new life here. “I’m not as worried as I was before.”
Sciel looks sidelong at Lune, pleased.
“I told him about Clea. It was really something, seeing him smile like that.”
Lune watches Sciel as she listens, her head tipping a little more, expression inquisitive, slightly expectant— as if waiting for a but... to follow that statement.
But it never does. Instead, Sciel's expression is bright and pleased, and she mentions Clea. Lune wonders if perhaps that prick of expectancy was just her own concern, projected. She can't say for certain where Verso's head is currently, even after her own conversations with the man.
"He is good at presenting a front," Lune agrees, a touch wryly, but she sobers soon enough. "I wonder if he's been to see her. How it went— what she thought about it. It must be a surprise for her, too. Hopefully a good one."
If Stella or Sol showed up here, Lune would be beside herself. But who knows how Clea would react.
When she thinks about the way he’d looked at them when he’d first walked into camp, tremendously calm and straightforward as he’d told them that Renoir was Expedition Zero’s commander, she thinks he could deliver the news of the world’s end without the slightest waver.
“I hope so too. I haven’t asked. I thought…” She pauses, pursing her lips together, turning her face up to the sky. “They haven’t seen each other since she died in the Fracture. If he has seen her, it must be painful. It’s been so emotional having Gustave back, I can’t imagine what I’d feel seeing Pierre again, or Dad… and it’s been the better part of a century for him.”
She sinks right back to lay down in the grass, hands folding across her ribs, grass all scrunched up under her.
"Yeah," Lune says quietly. There isn't much else to say to all that. A hint of concern returns. What little she's been around Clea, she has a hard time seeing her being moved— but suppose many people would say the same about Lune herself. Appearances deceive. She just hopes whenever the meeting happens, it will go well. Or at the very least, without heaping more trauma upon anyone. They've enough of that, already.
"Much as he's always been." A small hum, the wryness making a comeback to her tone. "Charming just so. Answering questions with questions, or evading them."
Lune frowns slightly, running her fingers idly through the soft grass around them. "Still. Something's different about him. I just... can't quite put a finger on what."
Sciel glances sidelong at Lune again when the quietness returns, eyes searching Lune's face, her posture. But Lune shifts back to being wry, and Sciel rolls with her.
"I know," she says, a little wistful.
She feels it too, that difference. Not at all like he'd been in their arrival to Etraya, really –– the same man, certainly, but motivated by something different. She thinks about the look on his face and the set of his shoulders and the way his arms had tensed holding the railing. The way his voice had flattened out ––no, not feeling lucky. What's going on with him? Is it fixable? Will they ever understand it? Can they help?
"Where do you even start?" she muses. "Jumping off the skyscraper, wanting Gustave to fight him, being jumpy about Maelle. Living out at Camp."
Lune exhales slowly through her nose, shoulders falling.
"I'm less surprised about the rest than I am about him being so rattled around Maelle. What could have caused it? He's seen her do something, but what? There's more there than he's willing to say. What could have been so bad it's making him act like that?"
The question is burning in her mind, niggling at her.
On a long enough timeline, any of his reactions could make sense, but Sciel isn’t so sure about the here and now. And it’s worse, maybe, that Maelle and Verso have been so isolated from each other since. Is something festering? Or is it time for Verso to shore up his defences, work up some terrible calm for the next encounter?
Her own questions have never felt truth-seeking. Answers, she thinks, will come when they understand each other a little better.
“She Gommaged Renoir, and his mother,” she says. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He knows how too, but that feels beyond them right now, a thing that would encourage Lune’s mind to reel around in circles like a carousel. “He puts on a brave face, but Gustave saw him vulnerable, and it took down his defences long enough for the Gommage to catch up with him.”
"You think that's all it is? Some sort of delayed stress reaction?"
All is maybe an unfair understatement. Losing one's family members is already plenty, even before the Gommage. She's not an expert on the mind, but all Lumièrans are intimately familiar with grief and what it can do to a person. Still.
"I guess it could be, but... I don't know." Lune frowns, still bothered by something elusive about this that she cannot grasp. "It feels like it's more than that, still."
"We all Gommaged, so that's the last it could be," she says. She's not convinced of that, but it's more non-committal than it is any desperation for an alternative. "Unless he's immune to that too, in which case... he's alone."
More than ever.
The sun is shining and the breeze is lovely and they're having a nice afternoon, but the mere concept of being in that situation feels like plunging into ice water. She has to swallow to let that pass, to take another breath, to smile again, bracingly.
"But if he did Gommage, that would be new to him. It could be frightening, too."
It is the last it could be, isn't it? It's the logical conclusion. What else would make sense? And yet...
Lune's expression grows pensive, a small frown knitting at her brows. Dissatisfaction, but underneath it, empathy as well. She understands Sciel's points; none of them can put themselves in Verso's position, not really. Perhaps... a bit later, they can try to broach the topic with him.
"Mm. Yes." She well remembers her own terror, the cloying panic crawling up her throat along with the ashes. "And he could associate that with Maelle. Even without meaning to."
"Right! I'm sure he has good reason to feel afraid, even if he's directing it at the wrong person," she says. "That kind of fear is never completely irrational."
She'd know; the Gommage had been calm, peaceful even, but sometimes stepping out of a loud and raucous party into the comparative quiet of the streets has made her throat close up, her body imagining itself thrashing in complete silence under the waves. People are nice about it, of course. It still feels shameful to explain, but she can.
She shakes her head, sad, disappointed.
"He said I was there. If it was the Gommage, you were right there with us, too. So... when he's ready, we can help him make sense of it."
Lune glances back at Sciel at that, catching that expression on her face. It's partly why she agrees so quickly. "Yeah. Of course."
Lune had lost sight of Verso in the harbor soon after they'd arrived, swept up in the hubbub of bring greeted as returning heroes, but the fact that she didn't see him get Gommaged didn't mean anything concrete.
"In the meanwhile, let's hope he can find other ways of coping that aren't punching Gustave in the face," she says, lips flattening into an unhappy line for a beat at the memory. "If he wants a fight, we're probably overdue some team sparring."
Sciel gives Lune a flash of a smile in turn, appreciative –– they’ll all be fine, she’s sure. Eventually.
“Augh, I am going to lose my mind if we don’t have a good spar sometime soon,” she says. It would be good for all of them, probably. Might be a little tough on Gustave’s pride, but if they’re all at risk of getting rusty, that should even the playing field a little. “Besides, they’re never going to get friendlier with each other if we keep them separated. Sparring’s a good place to start.”
No drinks, neutral ground, some semblance of protocol, an excuse to hit each other.
"Mm— I was hoping maybe one of these missions would help us with finding a new energy source to use with the Lumina Converter. I know there's a way to adjust it so it might use sources other than Chroma to create more Lumina."
Lune shakes her head, making a small sound of dissatisfaction. "It's not just pride, though. It's... bothering Gustave more than he's saying. He really believes he's a liability to us, with less Lumina and comparatively weaker Pictos."
And that in turn bothers Lune, on some raw, fundamental level, that Gustave thinks he's a weakness in the team— even if she cannot deny that when viewed through the lens of hard facts, Gustave is not on the same level as they are. She wants to fix it for him, with him, but so far even their combined efforts have yielded little results.
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adventuring!
"The biome is lovely in the Sirena territory too, but here it's like an eternal summer. I do wonder how the regions maintain such localized, steady climate... Do you think we'll run into that rabbit?"
There's barely a pause in between the two different thoughts, her mind busy in the way she loves best, puzzling over things. Lune's already filled several pages of her notebook in the time they've been wandering the wilds, unconcerned about the concept of potentially encroaching another court's territories.
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"That Caerbannog thing?" She mangles that name, but close enough. "I'd like to see what it would try on us. It's been so many weeks since we had an actual fight that I'd be disappointed if it was even a hair smaller than a Stalact. And on that note, do you think Monoco's station ever melts out?"
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Too high up for humans, probably. It's a sad thought, thinking of those wise, melancholy creatures losing more than they already have. Finished with her notes for now, Lune looks up and sideways at Sciel from her own spot on the grassy knoll, smiling.
"You know," she points with her pen at the longer grasses swaying in the wind. "If you hold one of those wider blades taut between the gap of your thumbs and blow on it, it makes a really loud whistle."
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Sciel sits up, following the line of Lune's pen, looking for the grasses. She gets off her bottom walks on her knees the few feet she needs to go to pluck two big, fat blades, and she brings them back with a grin. She holds one out on offer.
"Who taught you that?"
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"My sister. When we were kids." When there was still time and space for silly, childish things, when they weren't so driven apart by differing viewpoints. The small smile that tugs at her lips is wistful, maybe even a little sad, but she places the blade of glass lengthwise between her slender thumbs and brings them to her lips.
The sound that emerges is a shrilly ascending, ear-piercing ppffffiiiuuuu, and Lune stops to laugh at the horrible sound. Just the kind that used to drive her parents crazy when she did this with Stella, all those years ago. She blows again, this time more slowly; the sound is less grating this time, more recognizable as a whistle, carrying across the tree-littered hill.
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“Incredible,” she remarks, and she raises her own thumbs to her mouth and blows, and just gets a sort of weird spurting sound, her own breath between her own fingers. She laughs, and then is laughing too much to immediately try again. “You know, all the time I spent with plants, I was never thinking, I wonder what’ll happen if I blow on it.”
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"So, you learned something new today." She sounds amused and pleased in equal measure.
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Just as well that she has someone to learn from now, too, given how much of her own schooling she'd used as an opportunity for socializing, rather than learning.
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"Have you spoken with Verso lately?" she asks out of the blue, curious.
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"Sure have," she says.
Before Auriel, it was regular trips out to Camp with a backpack full of supplies and an itch to spend time with him, worried that he'd come around less if he thought he was intruding on them. Here it's a little more casual: crossing paths on neutral territory, mid-revelry, whenever it suits them.
"He looks good with white hair. It's such a shame he's so self-conscious about it."
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She pauses before she gets carried away with idle speculations, tilting her head and giving Sciel a sidelong glance. "How did he seem to you, otherwise?"
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What a shame to have such a beautiful colour ruined by such a miserable man, but she supposes that’s a rare treasure of everyone dying young; white hair on a young body is so striking, even novel.
As for Verso’s mood:
“Here and there. Less panicked, certainly, but he’s good at rallying,” she says, setting the blade of grass on her thigh and leaning back on both hands. Less outward panic doesn’t mean much when he’s had time to compose himself, and settle into a new life here. “I’m not as worried as I was before.”
Sciel looks sidelong at Lune, pleased.
“I told him about Clea. It was really something, seeing him smile like that.”
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But it never does. Instead, Sciel's expression is bright and pleased, and she mentions Clea. Lune wonders if perhaps that prick of expectancy was just her own concern, projected. She can't say for certain where Verso's head is currently, even after her own conversations with the man.
"He is good at presenting a front," Lune agrees, a touch wryly, but she sobers soon enough. "I wonder if he's been to see her. How it went— what she thought about it. It must be a surprise for her, too. Hopefully a good one."
If Stella or Sol showed up here, Lune would be beside herself. But who knows how Clea would react.
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When she thinks about the way he’d looked at them when he’d first walked into camp, tremendously calm and straightforward as he’d told them that Renoir was Expedition Zero’s commander, she thinks he could deliver the news of the world’s end without the slightest waver.
“I hope so too. I haven’t asked. I thought…” She pauses, pursing her lips together, turning her face up to the sky. “They haven’t seen each other since she died in the Fracture. If he has seen her, it must be painful. It’s been so emotional having Gustave back, I can’t imagine what I’d feel seeing Pierre again, or Dad… and it’s been the better part of a century for him.”
She sinks right back to lay down in the grass, hands folding across her ribs, grass all scrunched up under her.
“How has he been with you?”
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"Much as he's always been." A small hum, the wryness making a comeback to her tone. "Charming just so. Answering questions with questions, or evading them."
Lune frowns slightly, running her fingers idly through the soft grass around them. "Still. Something's different about him. I just... can't quite put a finger on what."
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"I know," she says, a little wistful.
She feels it too, that difference. Not at all like he'd been in their arrival to Etraya, really –– the same man, certainly, but motivated by something different. She thinks about the look on his face and the set of his shoulders and the way his arms had tensed holding the railing. The way his voice had flattened out ––no, not feeling lucky. What's going on with him? Is it fixable? Will they ever understand it? Can they help?
"Where do you even start?" she muses. "Jumping off the skyscraper, wanting Gustave to fight him, being jumpy about Maelle. Living out at Camp."
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"I'm less surprised about the rest than I am about him being so rattled around Maelle. What could have caused it? He's seen her do something, but what? There's more there than he's willing to say. What could have been so bad it's making him act like that?"
The question is burning in her mind, niggling at her.
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Her own questions have never felt truth-seeking. Answers, she thinks, will come when they understand each other a little better.
“She Gommaged Renoir, and his mother,” she says. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He knows how too, but that feels beyond them right now, a thing that would encourage Lune’s mind to reel around in circles like a carousel. “He puts on a brave face, but Gustave saw him vulnerable, and it took down his defences long enough for the Gommage to catch up with him.”
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All is maybe an unfair understatement. Losing one's family members is already plenty, even before the Gommage. She's not an expert on the mind, but all Lumièrans are intimately familiar with grief and what it can do to a person. Still.
"I guess it could be, but... I don't know." Lune frowns, still bothered by something elusive about this that she cannot grasp. "It feels like it's more than that, still."
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More than ever.
The sun is shining and the breeze is lovely and they're having a nice afternoon, but the mere concept of being in that situation feels like plunging into ice water. She has to swallow to let that pass, to take another breath, to smile again, bracingly.
"But if he did Gommage, that would be new to him. It could be frightening, too."
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Lune's expression grows pensive, a small frown knitting at her brows. Dissatisfaction, but underneath it, empathy as well. She understands Sciel's points; none of them can put themselves in Verso's position, not really. Perhaps... a bit later, they can try to broach the topic with him.
"Mm. Yes." She well remembers her own terror, the cloying panic crawling up her throat along with the ashes. "And he could associate that with Maelle. Even without meaning to."
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She'd know; the Gommage had been calm, peaceful even, but sometimes stepping out of a loud and raucous party into the comparative quiet of the streets has made her throat close up, her body imagining itself thrashing in complete silence under the waves. People are nice about it, of course. It still feels shameful to explain, but she can.
She shakes her head, sad, disappointed.
"He said I was there. If it was the Gommage, you were right there with us, too. So... when he's ready, we can help him make sense of it."
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Lune had lost sight of Verso in the harbor soon after they'd arrived, swept up in the hubbub of bring greeted as returning heroes, but the fact that she didn't see him get Gommaged didn't mean anything concrete.
"In the meanwhile, let's hope he can find other ways of coping that aren't punching Gustave in the face," she says, lips flattening into an unhappy line for a beat at the memory. "If he wants a fight, we're probably overdue some team sparring."
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“Augh, I am going to lose my mind if we don’t have a good spar sometime soon,” she says. It would be good for all of them, probably. Might be a little tough on Gustave’s pride, but if they’re all at risk of getting rusty, that should even the playing field a little. “Besides, they’re never going to get friendlier with each other if we keep them separated. Sparring’s a good place to start.”
No drinks, neutral ground, some semblance of protocol, an excuse to hit each other.
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Lune shakes her head, making a small sound of dissatisfaction. "It's not just pride, though. It's... bothering Gustave more than he's saying. He really believes he's a liability to us, with less Lumina and comparatively weaker Pictos."
And that in turn bothers Lune, on some raw, fundamental level, that Gustave thinks he's a weakness in the team— even if she cannot deny that when viewed through the lens of hard facts, Gustave is not on the same level as they are. She wants to fix it for him, with him, but so far even their combined efforts have yielded little results.
"Still. Some sparring couldn't hurt."
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