singillatim | 🎵whistle while you work🎶(closed)

"Privacy is more often a woman's prerogative anyway," Lanfear admits, with a bit of a crooked smile.

The real reason she hadn't elected to stay in the Community Hall had more to do with her desire to let her hair down, metaphorically speaking — to shrug off the guise that she's forced to wear around the people who only know her as "Selene" here, and she couldn't very well do that with the risk of so many other presences around, especially given how communal a space the Hall tends to be.

"Well, since you asked, I wouldn't have known not to gather green wood if I'd happened to come across it, so I suppose it's a good thing that I've just been warned off of it," she adds.

"This place does require a certain level of self-sufficiency, more than some might have been prepared for. But one must either adapt to endure or lean on another who can assist. It seems as though I've done a bit of both today."

Raju smiles like he’s been caught out, not embarrassed to have been laughing at a man for something the woman in front of him turns out not to have known either, but playing at it. But he doesn’t need to apologize, he can tell; she obviously doesn’t mind.

“We all adapt as best we can,” he says, warming his palms in front of the fire again. “If there’s anything else that you’re not sure about, please do ask me for it. I’m not used to this cold yet, but I might be able to help.”

His offer to assist her elicits a small, grateful smile — she's feeling more appreciative than she might have been mere moments ago before the fire flickered into existence, but now that she's warming up, it's having a better effect on her mood by consequence.

Still, his admittance about the realm he came from piques her interest further, and she doesn't hesitate to let that curiosity display itself across her features.

"Are you from a warmer place than this, then?" she asks, looking over the flames in his direction.

Raju raises his eyebrows and doesn't reply for a moment, looking faintly surprised. It isn't always easy to place a person by their accent, but the two of them— her some place in England, surely, and him equally as obvious to someone who...

He remembers the first time he'd come to this damned place. That boy had sworn he hadn't been speaking English, had talked instead about translation spells. It clearly been a fantasy, the rationalisation of a young, frightened mind against unexplainable things. Or so Raju had thought, then. Before everything else.

He hates this damned place, that it lets the impossible creep in even into what should be a normal, friendly conversation. It should be easier to assume that she's any other English woman who's just never talked to anyone from any part of India before.

"Oh yes." Raju is used to niceties; he smiles anyway, even if the smile's small. "The coldest days at home are the warmest ones here. I spent the last few years in Delhi but I'm from the south originally. India, of course."

His smile grows a little, polite, and he watches her face. He shouldn't. He shouldn't be trying to find out if she recognizes the name at all. He doesn't want to know. But if it's here, in front of him, he has to try to find out.

That reaction tells her a myriad of things — and also nothing, simultaneously. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time Lanfear has elicited a surprising response from someone since her arrival here, but there seems to be something uniquely pointed about it, as though he wasn't anticipating that particular question from her to begin with.

The longer she's been forced to remain, the more she's come to the conclusion that no one here is even remotely familiar with the world she remembers. She could make mention of cities like Cairhien, or Falme — or even the Two Rivers, small and unassuming though it may be — and wouldn't so much as earn a flicker of recognition.

If only she could get her hands on the power responsible for bringing them all here from different worlds — she still suspects it has to do with creating some sort of tear between dimensions, similar to what she and her colleagues had been attempting before releasing the last thing that anyone could have predicted.

"There's no India, in my world," she admits, with a touch of an apologetic smile, a brief shrug of both shoulders. "But just before, I was in a place called Falme, perhaps similar to your India in many respects. Golden sands, warm sun. A city built right at the edge of the crystal blue water, with a great tower overlooking all."

There's no India, in my world, she says and the smile stays in place on Raju's lips but his eyes change. His expression isn't surprise — he wasn't exactly not-expecting to hear something like this eventually — but he isn't really happy that the eventually had to be now.

He doesn't even like reading books about martians. Fiction works better when it's grounded.

My world. Of course, my world.

His smile tries to twitch wider and then fades. He looks down at his hands in front of the fire, focusing on rubbing his fingers around one another, on the warmth. It's the strangest sensation, hearing something like that spoken, apparently, with complete honesty, and to know that he should be asking politely for more detail anyway. Not liking what he's heard doesn't mean that she's been rude.

"That sounds beautiful," he murmurs, not looking up. "But not where you're from? Just a place you travelled to?"

"Just a place," she says, in a somewhat softer echo. There is some truth to the knowledge that Lanfear hasn't been in possession of anywhere that she can particularly call home — not when she's meant to be in service of something much greater than her own limited desires.

Perhaps the privacy of the moment, and the promise of only the trees being privy to their secrets, is what compels her to divulge some part of the truth now.

"I'm not really from anywhere." She doesn't say it to garner sympathy, or to make him feel poorly for having inquired about it in the first place, her features more neutral in the way that simply makes her admission a statement of fact rather than bemoaning a lack.

"Mm." He doesn't look back up yet. Her world. No wonder she's not from anywhere. Maybe she was born on a rocket ship.

The irritation doesn't have anything to do with her, though, does it? Maybe it would make conversation easier to pretend that she's only from some place very far away. It isn't impossible to imagine with this woman, even with the accent. She doesn't even look strange. In Delhi, he might have passed her on the street.

"Travelling since you were young, then? I've heard that can happen with military families. Diplomats. That sort of thing. This must be just another new country for you. In spite of all the..."

He doesn't have a word for it, the impossible things that happen here. Not one he really wants to use.

"Well." He smiles faintly down at the fire, shrugs a shoulder. "You know."

It goes against Lanfear's inner nature not to inquire further along the lines of the thoughts that he leaves dangling, but while she might probe deeper, try to coax him into uttering what lingers unspoken, Selene doesn't attempt such things, reaching more for politeness first.

"I suppose it's more accurate to say that I was dedicated to my work, over everything else, and the idea of putting down roots anywhere, of establishing a home, was not something that ever occurred to me on a deeper level."

How many hours had she poured into her theorems, her strategies, working so late into the night that she had fallen asleep at her desk, and then getting up to attack the same formulas in the hopes that she could achieve what seemed unachievable? That focused mindset, one that narrows in on a goal and refuses to give up until she's accomplished it, is what makes her a force to be reckoned with — but it had also earned her a more dangerous level.

"Suffice it to say, this place is different, yes, but also another landscape to grow accustomed to. Though it seems we've all mostly been left to fend for ourselves out here, against whatever threats may come." She hums softly, as if in reflection. "Or are we all meant to rely on each other, so that those threats don't feel quite so daunting?"

“I don’t know about meant to.” Raju rubs at his fingers, missing the mittens in his pocket. It would still be rude to wear them, though, while she has none, and at least the fire is still going.

He tries to gather up what he knows about the nature of this place. It isn’t much. Still— “It seems to me like no one expected us to be here. So maybe it will be what we make of it. What kind of work did you do?”

He asks at the risk of finding out more things stranger than he wants to know about, but it’s the thing to say, and he realises that he is actually curious, in spite of himself. Ignoring the impossibility of it, the kind of work that might be done by the kind of person who speaks so casually about other worlds is… interesting, isn’t it? Either interesting or overwhelming, he isn’t sure. He supposes he’s about to find out, depending on how strange her answer is.

It's fascinating for her, to hear his perspective on what brought them here — the possibility that no one was anticipating their arrival, that it was as much of a surprise to those already in Milton as it was to those who have been dubbed Interlopers.

For a moment, she's nearly tempted to steer the conversation back to that, instead of anything having to do with herself, but she knows she may not be able to get away with dodging the question, and she'll settle on offering only as much information as she's comfortable with — without divulging anything too revealing.

"I was a researcher," she murmurs, her voice soft in that reflective way. But Mierin Eronaile was a lifetime ago, and she's far from that woman now. "But... I left that life behind a long time ago. Becoming an innkeeper wasn't the sort of thing I had always envisioned myself, but it seemed to be where I could be of most use to others — and maybe here, too, if needed."

"Quite a change." So there's his answer. Strange, but not impossibly so. Strange, too, realising that he almost wishes the answer had been worse, more difficult to take; at least he would have the impossible thing in front of him, instead of only thinking about it. He should bite the bullet, ask and see the thing out in the open.

It's going to sound ridiculous.

Well, he's out of his depth anyway. Still, he looks at the fire instead of her while he decides how to phrase it, and as it comes out. It's embarrassing, asking a question about something someone else is treating as matter of fact and fundamental. Besides, what if she didn't mean it the way he took it, and asking makes that obvious? That would be even worse. But he has to know.

"Was that on a different... world, too?" he asks, carefully. "Your innkeeping work? From the place that you were before?"

The real answer to his question would unveil something that she is striving to keep hidden — the truth about who she really is, not to mention how long she's been afforded some form of existence. The vague truth would be something along the lines of a yes — that her work as a researcher was in a different realm entirely than the one she inhabits now, in an age defined by technological advancements that were ultimately destroyed in the Breaking, a time so long ago that few are alive to remember it.

But for his sake as well as her own, it is perhaps better that she does not err in favor of the truth.

"No," she responds, with an obliging smile. "But there came a time when the work that I was doing was rendered... obsolete. Replaced, by something more powerful." By the Dark One's magic, and the corruption, the tainting of saidin. "I found myself without a greater purpose, and keeping an inn... seemed as good an opportunity as any to earn enough crowns to support myself."

Raju nods, looking back down at the fire. Maybe it's for the best he doesn't learn what she means when she says worlds like that. He would have to change the subject now to do it, anyway. He watches the fire, rubs at his hands.

"I hope you're able to get back to it soon. How are you feeling? Any drier?"

Lanfear almost doesn't have the heart to tell him that there'll be no possibility of her returning to her work, and not merely because the woman who was once Mierin Eronaile is not someone she can ever be again — not the least of which is because she gave up that name, and that person, when she chose to become someone entirely different.

"Much," she finally responds, in lieu of anything else, and her smile widens, a further effort to reassure him that there's been no lasting harm done — at least, nothing a brief chat by a crackling fire couldn't fix. Slowly, she pushes herself up to standing.

"But I'm sure you have more important things to do than making polite conversation, and I'm happy to let you return to it."

Raju smiles, shaking his head. Nothing more important than any chore he can find to keep busy, anything to do to keep himself outside in the sunlight, even when it brings this awful cold with it. But he recognizes the end of a conversation when he nears it. "It wasn't any trouble. If you need anything else, I'll be nearby."

His smile purses for a moment, Raju looking amused at himself. "And more careful, this time. I'll try to keep an eye out below me."

🎵whistle while you work🎶(closed)

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