What's this? What's this? There's weird shit everywhere | Day Four, Morning [OPEN]

[justbeclaws]

No one not intimately familiar with the library would notice, but there have been some rearrangements of furniture in one particular out-of-the-way corner. Said corner, and the burnished oak desk inside it, are screened from the stacks even more than they already were, inaccessible to anyone unwilling to climb over some extremely uncomfortable-looking chairs.

Or crawl under them, of course.

Her den arranged to her immediate satisfaction, the typewriter makes her way forth in search of something less immediately satisfying: the lay of the land. She wants to know where things are, including people (and people who are also things). And who knows, perhaps there will be information hidden somewhere about the house and its Keeper, secrets not even Mason knows.

It seems right to her that a moderately stealthy expedition (there's no reason to be stealthy, particularly, but she doesn't really trust anything around her) should take place in the morning. Whether or not she's right about this remains to be seen.

Comments

[fireband]

"I...understand," he replied, awkwardly. He wishes he was just his fire self at the moment, burning logs his only preoccupation. There is a prolonged moment of him not saying anything.

"You said you remembered me," he says uncertainly.

[justbeclaws]

If he does want to talk about it now, on the other hand... "I rrememberr someone who looked like you, only we werre both morre similarr than we arre now. We talked, he and I and the otherrs, and he sounded like you. So I thought...he might be you, orr you might be him."

Put like that, it seems so fragile and tenuous as to be unbelievable. But here and now, what else is there to believe?

[fireband]

He's starting to freeze up again. Some part of him needs to know everything, as much as he can, and desperately. While the rest...well, the rest of him just wants to forget whoever he was and never be that person again.

He almost can't bring himself to ask.

"Was he..." He trails off. He doesn't know how to put it. Was he bad? Did you hate him? Did she even know, from what she saw?

[justbeclaws]

This person is hard to understand: he doesn't seem to know what he wants, which disorients her - mostly the people she's seen want something, even if it's for her to go away. Without that, she doesn't know what to do. And he's afraid of her. She's almost positive he shouldn't be; she hasn't done anything to hurt him that she knows of, and anyway he's the fire - what could she do to hurt him?

It feels weird, standing over him, like he should be scared of her. She crouches down on her haunches instead. "I don't know much about him. He looked like you," only younger, and she doesn't know if that means anything, with the way he looks older than his age now, "and we must have been some kind of frriends, all of us. We werre laughing; it follows, doesn't it? That's all. I was hoping...if you werre him, that you would know morre about me, too."

One moment is all she has, and that isn't enough.

[fireband]

He doesn't quite summon the social consciousness to reply, at first. He just finds himself staring at the floor instead of her face, trying to take that in. It isn't revolutionary information - or it shouldn't be, anyway. So he may have been happy, at a solitary moment in time. He might have had friends.

Maybe that's more surprising that it should be.

"I'm sorry, I don't," he finally manages, his voice quiet and somehow less harsh than it has been before. "I don't remember anything you'd want to be a part of."

[justbeclaws]

Well, that's ominous. It sets her wondering - is there something she doesn't remember that she should, something that made this person so old and scared? And if there is, does she want to know about it?

Of course she does. Prying killed the pouncebeast, and so on.

"Do you want to talk about it anyway? Orr wrrite it down?" This she knows about: writing things down is supposed to help. That's one of her functions.

[fireband]

He's told the story a fair number of times, now. But all of those had been when he was too scared and confused to have any identity beyond that one memory. Like a newborn, too empty to know anything.

Now he's built walls. He's been trying to hide away, to disappear, but he is just so persistently there.

"No. I...No, no, there need never be a recording of it," he says, moving away from the hearth, staring ahead of himself. "It doesn't matter anymore. I'm...I'm something different, now."

[justbeclaws]

"If you say so..." She'd rather be a person than a typewriter, but maybe it's different if you're a fire. Maybe he likes that better. (It must be pretty awful, what he remembers.)

"Then can we be furriends? Even if I'm wrrong?" She doesn't want to be wrong. She wants there to be some proof that her memory existed outside of her head.

[fireband]

He pulls his blanket more tightly to himself, staring off to the side. He can't meet her eyes.

"I don't have anything to offer," he says, almost like he's ashamed. He has nothing to give as a friend.

[justbeclaws]

A pained noise escapes her throat. Since...waking up, she's met a number of people, but most of them were - annoyed, or confused, or curious. No one was sad like this, so sad the word seems inadequate.

It doesn't feel right. No one should be this sad.

She considers his statement as objectively as she can. "Neitherr do I," she says at last, honestly.

[fireband]

He looks up to her, at that, and seems to consider what she's saying for a moment. But if it touched him inwardly, it doesn't last. He shakes his head.

"You seem...kind," he offers, with what little optimism he can muster. He's as scared of her as he is of everyone. Sometimes, supposed kindness makes the threat of betrayal so much worse.

[justbeclaws]

"...Maybe. To tell the trruth, I don't rreally know. Maybe I'm kind. Maybe I'm not. Maybe you arre." She leans against a bookcase and looks into the shadows of the walls. "I won't botherr you if you rreally don't want, though."

No matter what she says, something inside her aches. No one should be so sad. She wants to help. (And yes, yes she also wants to be liked. She feels more like a person that way. People have friends. Things don't.)

[fireband]

He does hesitate at her offer to just leave him be. She's one of the very few people who has actually let that be his decision. So many of them had decided to 'help' him while leaving him very little choice in the matter, and it left him disconcerted.

He stays where he is, for now.

"I don't feel very kind," he says. He doesn't think he could have been, to be treated like he was.

[justbeclaws]

Privately, she isn't surprised. 'Kind' isn't a word for someone so huddled-up-inside looking. But he hasn't told her to go away, and that may be something.

"Purrrrhaps you'rre something else interresting." The pun slips out almost by accident. She's really getting too old for those if she wants to be taken...seriously...by whom? Once she thinks about it, she doesn't know.

[fireband]

He acknowledges the pun in the back of his mind, in a vague and sort of distant way. He doesn't know enough about her to see it as a pun, so much as a person who has decided to make cat sounds at him. The options are entirely equivalent in terms of how much he actually cares about it, though.

"I'm the fire," he says, after a moment. "That's all there is."

All he feels is that burning anger, it seems. It's the only thing that feels real about him.

[justbeclaws]

She's not sure that can be true; if he were nothing but fire, would he be a person? Or would he be like these cabinets, with no people attached? But she doesn't feel like arguing the point. He doesn't seem like he'd get into the spirit of an argument.

"...So is therre anything in herre besides you?" she asks eventually. "Secrret passages orr anything?"

[fireband]

He glances around uncertainly, giving the gears and the pipes a careful look. He shakes his head a little, seemingly mostly to himself.

"I don't remember," he says. "I remember...fueling something. But. I don't know. I didn't care."

[justbeclaws]

She taps her nails on the pipes, making a metallic ring; if she switches from pipe to pipe, it's almost like music. She wonders whether it's more fun, or better, to be the fuel or the thing that's fueled. "I wonderr what they'rre all forr..." Whatever she used to know, mechanics isn't part of it.

[fireband]

"I heat other spaces in the house," he says. That is something he feels like he does know, even though he's not sure how he really experienced it. "Some are probably for that. The rest...I'm not sure."

[justbeclaws]

"Morre mysterries..." she mutters, disgruntled. "I'm getting furrrry tirred of nothing but mysterries arround herre."

[fireband]

He frowns at her.

"Why do you keep saying the wrong words?"

[justbeclaws]

She gapes at him. "Excuse you," she says eventually, "my diction is purrrrfect." She winks, then takes pity on him. "They'rre puns. It's fun! You should trry it."

[fireband]

He stares at her, obviously not getting the appeal.

"So you say a word that sounds similar but is wrong...?"

[justbeclaws]

"But is funny! And then if you come up with a specially good one, efurrrryone laughs, I think. It's like a game you can play with worrds!" She likes games. She feels like this hearth probably hasn't had enough of them.

[fireband]

He doesn't really have anything against that idea, on principle. It's not like he hates fun or anything. It's just hard for him to really get into that sort of thing, these days.

His frown lessens a little, though.

"I probably wouldn't be very good at that. It sounds like you are, though."