#c:solas

The earth had forgotten how to breathe fresh, Eva thought. Nothing looked clean anymore. Grime and dirt laid their claim to the land in drapes of sandy dunes, and all that had once shone remained unblinking no matter how much you spit for it. Even the stars winked at them tiredly, like only halves of their hearts were attending the nightly ceremony; held here only by the moon who refused to abandon the earth even at its ugliest--most vile.

How poetic. ( A fool’s folly almost always was. )

Maybe that made her some measure of one too, for Eva’s spine was wrought with steel when it came to standing by what she had deemed her own. She did not abandon her principles even in this broken aftermath. She had taken to them like blood once upon a time ago, and burned their promises into her skin until it turned from ivory to iron. This world was a barren one, its winds howling with lies that the sun beat into truth onto the confines of withering minds. If you didn’t stand for something, it was easy to lose oneself to it all. It was their inevitability; the curse burdened to be carried by the survivors ( as they hailed themselves; not even gods beating out their lasts breaths to let the hells crack open were enough to take the vanity out of the man )--but this wasn’t surviving.                                                        No. It was merely selling yourself to the unending, chip by bartered chip; just had to know how many chips to bargain to bid your time, comrade.                                                         A soldier’s tale.                   ( If they were all survivors for keeping the barren of their chests in static flesh, then surely they were all soldiers for having seen the wrath of war. ) 

How long Eva would be allowed to carry the title, though, was the question. She hadn’t always been a soldier, after all. She had once been Euna-- - 

The incessant drown of her own mind erred somewhere along the ends of tiresome and unrelieved, her brown, harrowing eyes tracing the ceiling as she took another swig of the whiskey. Petal lips released some low of an exasperated sigh, her expression as it painted was set on far more complacent terms as the slide of her finger began to trace rhythms of the strings being played somewhere in the dark corner of the bar. It was a bouncing narrative, plucky and quick paced enough to set some metronome to the occasional shadow that hovered over her before passing. Her back was to the performers ( generous term, that ), her hands looping over the bar counter that faced the barren wall lined with ( what had once been, before the pestilence of sun or of flesh got to it ) copper brick. It was swipe after passing swipe, the passing shadows of people making their way in and out as if lingering in dances of their own--but not overstaying their welcome. 

One did, though. She saw it falling over the rim of the jug ( serving as a glass, in these matters ), festering steady even after she had allowed it one swig’s worth of time to meander. Eva could feel the build of the presence spilling over her shoulder and into the clam serene she had flowered for herself in the arms of charmed homemade whiskey and out of tune strings on drying voices. Head tilting to a side, the curtain of her hair shifted as her torso did. Nimble fingers reaching for a beloved blade, the movement was as swift and seamless as the pass of a second. As steel sliced and embedded itself into the stool that sat rickety on her right, her hand returned to cradle the jug even as she left the knife sticking out the seat of the stool.

“Hop along.” For all the sharp of her moves, her voice was the billow of a breeze idling. Eva was here for the whiskey and the whiskey alone. “Seat’s taken.”

@thenebulous

Tev was standing and watching, as usual; there were things that could only be learned by experiencing them -- by joining in -- but that stage of the experiment was usually a late one, coming only after considerable observation beforehand. Unless circumstances forced a more active role, of course. For now all was calm, at least by the standards of the marketplace; nothing in Colorado Springs was ever truly calm, which was what Tev loved about the place. It was what ki loved about the whole world, really.

Right now ki was trying to love dancing, but it wasn’t going well. Everyone else seemed to be getting something out of the music that Tev wasn’t. They were all moving together, whether they were part of the whirling group of people stomping around the ukulele-weilding musician or just a bystander tapping their feet on the sidelines. Tev tried tapping kirs feet but it felt wrong, felt off; there was none of the sense of connection that ki could almost taste as it flowed between the other watchers and dancers. They moved in time with one another as though to some unseen cue; Tev couldn’t tell what it was. Ki counted in kirs head, one-two-three-four, but it didn’t make things any clearer.

Deciding that maybe this was one of those things that had to be done to be understood, Tev stepped forward and stomped kirs feet like the dancers. Ki counted and watched the steps and echoed the pattern that everyone else was making but it didn’t feel right; kirs feet didn’t move at the same time, didn’t flow the way everyone else’s did. “There’s a component to this I’m missing,” ki announced, more to kirself than to anyone in particular. “There must be.”

Pelle shrugged. “Flowers are much kinder than us in the sense of greed, They give a lot more than they take so I have to say I agree with you.”

There was certainly a question begging to be asked, though Pelle wondered should he dare? It seemed--odd so to say for Solas to be standing in front of the infirmary with a bouquet of flowers. Not that Solas was heartless or lacked any regard for others who were not himself, but he was generally a little more passive the way he expressed himself. If he was bearing flowers it was safe to assume the flowers were for someone yes?