🎵whistle while you work🎶(closed)

[load_aim_shoot]

Who: A. Rama Raju, Lanfear, William Gibson, Renny Oldoak
What: wilderness chore bonding time!
When: I'm thinking some time after the ghostly housefire, but it's loose
Where: the forest around Milton

Content Warnings: talk about food/eating/not eating, possible talk of fire stuff. will add as stuff comes up

Comments

[lanfeared]

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."

[load_aim_shoot]

"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?"

[lanfeared]

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."

[load_aim_shoot]

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?"

[lanfeared]

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."

[load_aim_shoot]

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."