transient beings are we.

It had been so easy to fall asleep in the gentle sound of the rain, echoing off the rooftops. Nap time had been a while ago, but when the rain called out to one with it’s beautiful melody of song, one did not ignore it.

One of her caretakers had roused her a few hours later, hand on her shoulder gently shaking her towards consciousness. Mitama grumbled, and tried to roll away from it, but the older woman was having none of it. “Mitama…your father has come to visit you.”

That was enough to spur her tiny form into movement. Immediately rising to her feet. They patted against the wooden floor as she made her way to the front door.

Another of her caretakers had already opened the door for her father. She smiled brightly. “Father!” She called out. Her small arms wrapped around his waist as she crashed into him, giggling excitedly. “Father, I missed you!”

Ah. Salvation at last.

In truth, however, the wait had not been so cripplingly long as he’d made it out to be. Certainly, the amount of time he'd stood at the front door paled in comparison to the time elapsed since last he had been able to visit. Guilt was to the carefree monk a foreign feeling, and this odd outrealms situation did not prove much an exception...

but if anything, it came very close. And maybe, just maybe, as Mitama's little pitter patter of steps reached his ears and her small form came into view, Azama felt something akin to a twinge of remorse. Small. But not as small as the last time he’d seen her.

"And I, you, little one," he replied as he stooped to pick her up. He swung her in the air before finally bringing her in close for a careful yet nonetheless bear crushing hug.

Better she grow up here, away from the ravages of war.

It seemed impossible for Azama to reach her hand and Silque knew that she’d be unable to reach down any further. Not without risking her own safety or being able to pull Azama back up with her. As much as she tried, she was going to have to do something else in order to rescue this stranger. Silque wasn’t going to just watch him fall to his doom. Not if she could do something about it.

Silque nodded at the question, moving back up onto the ledge and glancing around. She dismissed a few things as being too fragile or short to help, but she finally spotted something that would work. He had mentioned his staff and through luck or the blessing of Mila (or whichever God existed here) there it was only a few feet away. She spared one last glance back over at Azama to make sure that he hadn’t fallen further down the cliff-side and hurried over to it. Once she retrieved the staff, she hurried back, glad to see that he was still safe. He might not remain that way for much longer, though, so Silque slowly edged the staff down towards him.

“Grab on and I’ll pull you up.” Silque was not a strong woman. She wasn’t fragile as some might assume a holy woman would be. Her early life had instilled a desire to remain fit just in case she had to travel far and ran into problems. Yet that didn’t mean she had much upper body strength. She wasn’t going to let Azama fall. She prayed that she’d find the strength to pull him back up. Just long enough for him to make it. She didn’t need much, just enough to save his life. 

Given he had little other recourse, he waited. The view from his unusual vantage point commanded respect and felt fresh, different... far removed from what it had been up above, observed whilst under the pretense of relative safety. Breath-taking in a whole new way. Truly.

When Silque returned, it felt at once as though no time in the world had passed and yet also like seconds, minutes, hours, days since last he’d seen her. There was little point in contemplating his fate. He simply mourned that if he should fall here... well, who else would pester his liege or his fellow retainer or even his precious daughter? Those would be big shoes to fill.

Alas.

Glancing up past his precarious hold, he frowned. She was slighter than he remembered. Falling himself was one thing - dragging another to their doom along with him... well, even he had morals. "You know," he started, half whimsical. "If you happen to drop me, I won't hold it against you." Not much, nor for long, at any rate.

"But all right, brace yourself - here goes."

“Aza-” His challenge resonated, and Setsuna fell quiet a moment before hr practiced smile slid back into place. Was that the game he wanted to play tonight? Fair enough.

“But Azama!” She drawled, elongated his name for effect. “I thought priests were supposed to give up all worldly titles. And you’re, of course, the best priest I know. You can’t expect me to believe you really have a title.”

"Bah," he bit back immediately, waving her statement aside. "You've a point," he ceded, in spite of himself, "but what do the gods care for mundane titles of human make? I could be a priest and king of the dance floor, both, and it would undoubtedly be of little overall concern to them..."

With a wry grin, he wagged a finger in protest. "It's no joke! The village I was staying at bestowed it upon me at a festival much akin to this one. I refused it on principle, of course, and made of it a lesson for that day's lecture... but it would be rude of me not to carry it in spirit at the least once, you see."

Silque wanted to see more of this world. After parting ways with Setsuna, she was eager to see more of Hoshido and the lands beyond it. She was still learning about the culture and the people of Hoshido, but she was also curious about the wildlife and the world itself. What sort of places were there? Were the mountain ranges or seas any different than the ones she had come to know? What sort of tales were spread about about deep forests or the misty mountain peaks? Silque had spent her childhood exploring the world with her mother and learning how to survive out in the wild. She could put those skills to use here as she explored.

Silque had learned that this world was not so different from her own. The cultures of Hoshido was something she was still learning about and trying to understand, but nature seemed to be the same. Well most of it. There were plants and other things that weren’t ones she knew or were different in some ways from the others she grew up learning about. 

The mountain range she had found herself on was rumored to be sacred. Despite spending time with the people here, she still knew little of their religions and beliefs. But the thought of a sacred mountain range intrigued her. She felt like it was almost fate she’d learn about it. Traveling alone might not be wise, but if she felt like she was out of her depth or in danger, she’d return. 

She noticed him standing there before she fell. Silque let out a startled cry, carried off partly by the winds. Her heart stopped for just a moment - had she just witnessed the death of a stranger? Then she was rushing to the edge, careful not to send herself over the side. Nothing, nothing and then she noticed a hand. 

“Hold on,” she called down, reaching out as far as she could, fingers grazing near where his hand was. “I’ll pull you up but I can’t quite reach you.”

He wasn't even sure why he was holding on. There was something almost poetic about it. Here he was - a man who'd spent much of his life casually quipping about the futility of life and how everything was predetermined - dangling on the precipice without much a say in the matter. There was no pulling himself up given his hold was precarious as is, and letting go...

Well, wasn't much waiting below, he imagined. Stone did not make for much of a tender embrace.

A few rocks skittered down from the edge above, causing him to wince and then look up once the dust had cleared. Lo and behold, a face - so this was how it was, then. Fate had made him its special plaything for the day. Was he meant to be filled with some kind of hope, here and now? Instead, he simply stared up, brows lifted skeptically.

"I'm holding on, yes." Sounded like a fantastic idea, that. "Could do this all day, you know." As she reached, he was sorely tempted to try something, anything, really, but a groan in his handhold changed his mind. "I'm... not sure I can move much down here without compromising my, ah, situation," he admitted, his tone taking on a slightly graver timbre than it had previously managed. 

Forde thrashed through the underbrush, footsteps thudding against the forest floor. It wasn’t often that he ran completely without grace, but a bear had caught him hunkered down on the edge of the river, attempting to sketch her cubs in their whimsical playing. The hard spike of adrenaline that had hit his system was refreshing, propelling him from the position he had crawled into. He hadn’t bothered to wait and see what her next action was - be it in her best interest to ignore him, or mayhap chase him - so instead Forde had thundered off into the surrounding foliage. 

He honest-to-god had no idea where he was going, and so when a voice called out to him it brought his body to a screeching halt. Forde stumbled out with even less grace - if that was even possible at this point - into a soft clearing.

“Ho there! Sorry to intrude.” He panted, head snapping around to make sure that no hulking form had lumbered after him.

Since no such thing sprang froth, Forde let the tension in his body slowly dissolve - his attention drawn finally to the monkish looking man sitting on the ground.

The monk reached for the staff lain on the ground before him and set it across his knees. He inhaled through his nose, a deep breath felt all the way in his belly. Exhaled through his mouth, a curt huff mourning his meditation cut short.

Wrinkle in his brow, Azama was for a moment tempted not to accept the other's apology. A low, contemplative hum accompanied the idea, though in the end he found himself resigned.

"No harm, no foul," he replied at length, setting the butt end of his staff into the dirt and using it to help push himself to his feet. "I had been debating whether or not I ought to continue as I was, and this seems as clear a sign as any that it was not to be."

... Much though he might have preferred that no barbarian come indiscriminately stumbling into his clearing. Still, the other's frayed breath was not lost on him - paired with the aforementioned entrance, it was not so difficult to put two and two together. Maybe it was time to actually do his job. For once.

"What ails you then, stranger? Is there something afoot?"

-You are the cause of all entropy.

-I don’t know how, but I’m going to blame you for all my problems.

-Life on this earth is brief.

-What do you think about the plight of the Jewish people, Miss Kitty?

-You have to ask yourself, Miss Kitty, would your rather be comforted by a lie or strengthened by the truth?

-You occupy a very small space in a very large world, but your conscience is ever the umbrella. You also have a cute kitty butt.

- (after the cat ate a ribbon and threw it up) You wanted to be beautiful on the inside, didn’t you?

-You understand that life is meaningless and we must take pleasure where we can. And for you that is on this blue blanket.

-I will fight you in hell upon a mound of bones, Miss Kitty.

-You are a single bead in the string of lives that I hold together.

-You can get used to a certain kind of poison, Miss Kitty

-Sometimes that little light escapes the darkness of your heart, and then you cage it again.

- I… am SO PROUD to have a cat that would murder her children.

       -(justifying it) Come on! She’d be a terrible mother!

- We can’t be equals until you get a job, you goddamn freeloader.

- You and your eight nipples are shit.