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Lucent Their clothes had been left to fall at the feet of the bed. They were under the covers. It was slow, it was sweet, and his eyes never left hers'. Hell, they used a bed, to begin with. In short, it was the opposite of everything they had done before, making Lucent wonder if there were no Spells involved. Some third Circle ones DO make mirror universes and selves...
Lucent "So." He breathed on her ear, "Who starts?"
Varanim "What, again? You did miss me."
Lucent chuckles, tickling her sides "No, no, not THAT! Though I did..."
Varanim "Ack," she says, swatting at him. "Starts what, then--introductions? Hi, I'm Varanim, fancy meeting you here."
Lucent grins, "Hi, I am Lucent Copper Haze! You always hang out here?"
Varanim rolls onto her side, propping her head up on one hand to look at him balefully. "And I thought you were annoyingly chipper before. This is the last time I let you steal my drugged coffee."
Lucent "Well, THAT explains the lack of yelling!"
Varanim Her frown deepens. "This is what a good day looks like, you know. There are going to be plenty of bad ones."
Lucent "You do realise that saying that makes me officially your boyfriend?"
Varanim grimaces, rolling back and throwing her soulsteel arm over her eyes as if to soothe a headache. "Are you trying to find the right combination of words to make me throw you out, is that what this is about?"
Lucent takes the soulsteel arm on his hand, looking into her eyes as he kisses its fingers. "Actually, curious. I thought you were, too. So I start?"
Varanim "I... sure." She looks a little lost.
Lucent looks past her, now, indicating it with his eyes. "What is that sunset?"
Varanim looks over at it, face thoughtful for a long minute before she answers. "It's the day I realized that there would never be an end of interesting problems. I haven't thought of it in years, now, but I remember." She smirks. "Of course, I still thought I was going to be a doctor, then. The mask there is much more accurate."
Lucent kisses the last finger, nuzzling moaning souls. "What happenned that day?"
Varanim "It was--stop that--the day I decided to leave my little hole of a mining village and go to the university. I had spent a while thinking very angrily about all the world's ills, and then I decided it was really more useful to treat them as interesting problems." She smirks a bit. "I ended up not leaving then, because of Adar, but it was an important day."
Lucent "Ah, so that is when you stopped getting into fights."
Varanim "What?" She looks over at him again, pulled out of memory.
Lucent "I met Varanim the younger. Twice. One was older and had a marigold in her hair." He gestures emphatically, "She was calm and bright, she knew what she was doing, and she was married. The other was younger, looked as if she had been beaten up quite badly, and did not want anyone to help her with her problems. And she kept the Last Gate. Which is now open, but then again, she said she would if..."
Lucent stops. "... well, those two. I assume you got into fights quite often?"
Varanim blinks, thinking about that for a minute. "Hm, the inside of my head is a little idealized. But... I was a less angry person, around him. Or I was becoming one." She frowns over at Lucent. "I did get in a number of fights as a little girl, though. Why are you asking?"
Lucent "Why did you look beat up, before you met Adar?"
Varanim smirks. "Because my mother was a mean drunk. Too easy, ask another."
Lucent winces. "Sorry."
Varanim shrugs. "Water under the bridge, as the kids say. Go on, you're wasting my answering mood."
Lucent caresses her hair, where the marigold would be. One appears there, ephemeral as a play of light, but so much brighter in the starlit room. He stared at it for a moment... and then turned to lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. "How come you went from her to Adar?"
Varanim "I actually went from her to apprentice with the exceedingly cranky village midwife, if we're touring old corners of my life. Adar and I..." she shrugs. "His sister-in-law almost died in childbirth; he walked me home in the rain afterwards. I told him to piss off. He started stopping by on his way home in the evenings, sometimes."
Varanim "I went to a harvest dance with him on a bet, we snuck out to roll in the hay, and decided afterward that maybe it was a good idea." She shrugs again, more awkwardly. "It was a pretty passable peasant romance. There are no great epics in my life, Lucent."
Lucent "Silly. All bitter and cynical and you never realised." He smiles, then, rolling towards her, entangling the sheets around them as he got above her, pining her soulsteel arm. "Epics are but the events of life made larger than it. Made true. Or made fake. Or made grand by tale and thus becoming as they were meant to be. Who knows? The Yozi told me how all my love, my life, my suffering, was nothing before the barest movement of one of her spheres."
Lucent "And yet."
Lucent He grinned, closing his eyes and beggining to declaim, the voice of a court poet, " ~The more she pressed, the more he noticed her. The more she infuriated him the more he felt something great, something real. Oh, but she was but a child! Foolish and insolent! And yet, it burnt in his soul that feel, as he saw the deepest crevasses of her own! Irritation met admiration, grudging awe gave way to love before he realised.~
Lucent ~Did he dream of the marigold before? She remembered him of the past, and anchored him to the present. She made it real for the first time. Made him feel alive, feel the fire for once. Before she hurt him, when irritation flared into lust he tried to deny, fire that stoked their flame and let it burn away at their senses...~" He stopped, with the smile of a troubadour asking for the children to leave the room so he can continue the tale.
Lucent "Our lives."
Lucent "And someday, someone will think of Adar's as well. Write in his view, to fit your legend. Of the boy who saw that brave, courageous girl as a woman for the first time as she saved his sister! ~And then he walked her home, and with every step she changed, from the village girl he knew into the savior he had seen. The competent, powerful woman who snatched his heart dodging gutterpools and kicking frogs.~
Lucent ~And with the same fire she saved lives she told him to go, and the more she pushed him away, the more she infuriated him more love he felt for such an unusual woman, so spirited, so headstrong, love that had to touch, to dance, to conquer...~" The same troubadour's smile. "Or maybe I am just projecting myself in him, wishful thinking that we are so alike."
Varanim Varanim's expression is somewhere between aghast, annoyed, and affectionate as Lucent spins out the stories. She shakes her head at the end, snorting. "Only as large as life, thank you."
Varanim "He was a miner, built like an ox. He had big hands with scars across the knuckles, and a laugh that could shake a room. He only spoke when he had something to say, but he was altogether more clever than he looked." She sighs. "And that was Two Oaks Adar. You're not much alike, but... thank you, Lucent. For the story." She touches his face with her flesh hand, almost smiling.
Lucent "You see?" He smiles, nuzzling it. "A character worth of an epic tale!"
Varanim "What you're doing now is referred to as pushing your luck," she smirks. "Anything else? This is easier than I expected," then she trails off with a funny look on her face. "Easier than it used to be," she adds quietly, after a moment.
Lucent appears not to notice it, leaning closer to kiss her again. A long kiss, breaking off with a mere line between them... "Just this: we all matter. All we do is an epic. This is what the Yozi tried to break me away from, this is the truth of your Exaltation. That any man can raise his fist to the sky, gather lighting from god and remake this world. That all stories matter, because they lead to it, in one way or another."
Lucent "Or, if you prefer it." He grins. "You are a walking, breathing, living 'fuck you' to them."
Varanim narrows her eyes. "Think of it however keeps you warm, as long as you don't get your soppy epics all over my notes."
Lucent "I like that idea." He smiles, "Getting all over, I mean. I DID miss you so..."
Varanim smirks at him, then it fades, and her eyes go distant even as she strokes his face one last time. "Later. I have work to do, now."
Lucent pouts, looking as if the sun has failed to show his face. Eyes downcast, he begun to kiss down on her, "Work will be there later."
Varanim lifts her hand to cover his mouth. "Yes," she says a little grimly, "that's the point. If you make me say something as tired as 'I need my space', I'm going to become very irritable indeed."
Lucent shrugs and gets up to his knees on the bed, cross "You are a horrible, horrible woman."
Varanim "The worst kind--I should take up necromancy or something."
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