etraya | UN: ScielCandide

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UN: ScielCandide | Video

[The camera is fixed on a table, upon which sits a neat stack of cards –– black with gold foil in the shape of a sun and moon bisecting each other. The user’s hands pass over the deck and spreads it wide into an arc. Her hands are tanned, with two rings on her ring finger and one on her index finger, and she has so many colourful braided bracelets that some wind around her palm.

Her voice is pleasant, playful, French, a little theatrical:]

Bonsoir, mes amies!

Tonight and tonight only, I will tell your fortune with a single card. Tell me your name, and if you would like to hear about love, money, health or the soul.

If it moves you, you must repay me with an amusing anecdote about yourself.

Ready to play?

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More times than I could count.

[She leans just enough to bump him with her shoulder.]

You know, I think she’s the old one at heart, the way she likes to wag her finger at our love for wine. But I’ll take the piggy-back, if you aren’t three sheets to the wind first!

If I am, I'll expect you to be the one carrying me.

[ He doesn't shift with that bump, just leans right back into her, letting her bounce gently off his shoulder. It's an absurd relief to know that two very strong drinks are coming their way, and that Sciel came out to be with him, after... well, after everything. ]

We're overdue for this, I think. So—

[ He couldn't be sly if his life depended on it, but there's a distinctly amused quirk to the corner of his smile. ]

—I'm grateful you're taking a whole evening out of your social schedule for a drink with an old friend.

That’s what all the training was for, you know, waste of time if you can’t sling a friend on your back and carry him across the island.

[And they are so sorely overdue. So much so that she can only roll her eyes to the ceiling and grin at his little tease. She can’t look innocent, not even close, but she’ll return her attention back to him and try it anyway:]

No idea what you’re talking about, I’m home and in bed every night by sundown. [She definitely did not creep in at three last night. Definitely was not out the door again by noon.] And even if I wasn’t, you’re still my absolute favourite.

So you're saying if we put a bell on the door, it won't ring in the middle of the night?

[ He couldn't care less, is just happy she's going out and having such a grand time. It's always been easy for Sciel to make friends, and if she ever did decide it was time to mend her broken heart and move on, she'd have no shortage of suitors.

And he's glad to see she isn't pining over Verso, hurting for more reasons than those affecting Maelle. He'd worried over it for a while; still does, if he's being honest. ]

I'll take it, for as long as I can hold onto the title.

[ Their drinks come, and he pushes hers over to her before lifting his own in a toast. ]

...What are we drinking to, again?

[She just smiles slyly, neither confirming nor denying how still a bell might be in the night. It had crossed her mind some weeks ago that living with a friend and his child might pose some interesting challenges to the way she likes to live, but there’s no living other way, either, and it’s worked out well, some teasing from Maelle aside.

And maybe it would be different if she was heading out to spend time with Verso, but as it is… she’s glad to be ribbed this way. It feels comfortable. Much easier than she’d expected.]

Hold onto it? Well, don’t let go, monsieur, because it’s not going anywhere otherwise.

[She takes her drink and lifts it, though she lifts it to her nose to smell it. Fireball and bourbon are… powerful, though she can’t place the spice of it otherwise. Alright, up it goes in proper toast.]

We are drinking to “enjoying drinking with each other,” which is sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy, isn’t it?

[ He lifts his own drink, which smells concerningly sweet beneath the smoke. Tomorrow morning is likely to be rough. ]

Let's hope so.

[ Lately, conversations with Sciel have been less predictable than they used to be, but they're both here, trying, and that has to count for something.

He taps his glass against hers, the thick glass making a satisfying clink, amber liquid sloshing over ice. ]

To my soon to be aching head, and soon to be refreshed wardrobe.

[ A pair of jeans may soon be in his future... ]

[Let's hope so is not the most heartening of answers, and it feels like he's anticipating the possibility of someone taking an exit, stage right.]

To something a bit less buttoned up!

[She smiles at him over the rim of her glass and drinks...

... and immediately makes a screwed up face. She's lucky she can swallow before she starts laughing.]

Oh, that's... something. What is that?

[ Gustave chuckles, shoulders lifting in a shrug. Buttoned up is a good descriptor of how he's been feeling in general, lately. Not necessarily a good thing. ]

Maybe I'll try one of those cropped shirts. You seem to like them!

[ He makes a face of his own, seeing the way hers scrunches, then takes a swallow of his own drink — a good-sized one. No pussyfooting around an unfamiliar beverage here!

The punch of flavor is like nothing he's ever had before — spiced and smoky and a little sweet — and he coughs before breaking into a laugh of his own. ]

It tastes like someone set fire to a clump of spices and then soaked them in... what is this? Not cognac?

[She picks up the menu, relocating it, as if she could have misread something just minutes ago.]

The bourbon? It sounded like a word from our language, but whatever it is, it's not-– [A laugh, the back of her hand against her mouth as the liquid burns its way down to her belly.] Would a Lumièrian ever drink this? [It'd overpower everything.] It's like drinking desert air.

We're drinking it, so I guess that answers that question. Though whether we continue drinking it is another.

[ He swills the drink a moment, brows furrowing, then takes another sip as he attempts to discern whether he likes it or not. ]

Oof. It's strong, I'll give it that. It'll do the trick, though we might regret it in the morning.

I'm finishing it. It'll make the next one even better by comparison.

[Maybe it's manageable in small sips. Seems better than wasting it, anyway; two months hasn't shaken a life of making every mouthful count. Someone somewhere worked hard to make this, and all.]

No regrets! This is a wise thing to do. We can't fall out of practice, you know, and that Expedition was far too dry, Esquie aside.

It's strong enough I doubt we'll even be able to taste the next one.

[ Which is exactly what he wanted, so he lifts his glass to her in another tiny toast and takes another sip. The taste is already smoothing out, and he has to admit he likes the way it burns all the way down his chest, warming him from the inside out. ]

It's just as well. If we'd had any wine, Lune and I would have drunk it all that very first night and probably not gotten out of the Meadows at all.

[Fireball, the extinguisher of other flavours. Sciel grins, her attention moving briefly back to the menu, coasting over all the other options, what they’ll do next.]

Not the worst way to go, though, too smashed to feel it when a Nevron picks you off.

[That was grim! She moves on like it wasn’t:]

She’s fun with wine in her! Have you ever seen her drunk? [Must have, maybe after a long evening of bickering over work.] She wouldn’t drink with me at the Festival, I was worried she’d lost the ability to loosen up entirely.

[ He winces, thinking of Lucien, but Sciel sails onward and he follows along, albeit with a little more effort. ]

Drunk, no. Maybe with one or two more glasses of wine in her than usual, but never more than that.

[ He laughs, recalling that night. The pinch of grief at recalling those friends now long gone is an old and familiar one. ]

Not with me, either! I tried to get her to have a drink and she just told me to go away.

[She bumps her knee against the side of his.]

Never? Too bad! I occasionally secretly imagined you two shared a moment in an office or the lab or something.

[Not a secret anymore, but still a fond wish –– that both of them could overcome their foibles and have some pleasant little tryst, something to break up the monotony of work and an ever-approaching doom.]

Either way, we’ll make it right. When she gets here, we’ll drink again, and we’ll make the Festival look like a council meeting by comparison.

Mm.

[ A non-committal hum into his glass, the same response he'd given Sophie when she started down the same path, talking about him and Lune together. He hadn't wanted to think about it at the time, and after... well.

In the end, it's just as well. He seriously doubts Lune ever harbored any thoughts of that nature towards him.

Another swallow down, he adds: ]

Not unless you count us arguing over the best ways to calibrate the Lumina converter.

[ He leans on the bartop, regarding Sciel with affection. Whatever doubts he's been harboring about Lune joining them, she seems blessedly free of anything similar. ]

You really are sure she'll get here, aren't you?

[Your avoidance has been noted, sir. Sciel shakes her head, smiling into her glass.

For a few weeks, she'd been so absolutely sure about being the last one standing. To see them all alive again had been a wonderful twist, but getting to cross paths with Gustave once more had been nothing short of exhilarating. Anyone could live. Why not believe in it?

Wherever Lune is right now, it's not far.

She grins.]

I've been saying it since we got here. The deal has been sealed since we saw her in San Fran, we're just waiting for her to be couriered over.

Besides, we're a team.

She'll be annoyed to be so late, [ is Gustave's prediction. ]

But the sooner she gets here, the better. I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to adjust the Lumina converter to work with other kinds of energy than chroma alone, and I'm sure she'd have plenty of insight.

[ And what else would Lune want to do on her arrival aside from dive into a thorny research question? ]

[Probably a good one.]

Maybe Aurora thought she needed a bit of relaxation. She thought wrong, obviously, but being late isn't the worst thing in the world.

[She drums her fingers on the bartop, wondering.]

It'd be handy if you could. We've all been neglecting our training, but it's hard without chroma anyway. I give you and Lune about a week to get it sorted out.

If we don't sleep, it might only be a few days.

[ Lightly joking as he turns his attention momentarily back to his drink, which is better now that some of the ice has melted into it. The Lumina converter has been on his mind for a while, and not just as a way to give the team their edge. He's behind — he's known it since Maelle and Sciel and Verso first arrived, bearing new, stronger pictos and lumina. That was the whole point, to get stronger the closer they came to the Monolith, but—

There's a weak point in the team now: him. If they're on a mission, or even just attacked here on Etraya, he'll be a liability to them, a vulnerability. Unless he can find a way to catch up. ]

Strange to be in a world without chroma, isn't it? I felt a lot better when it came back to me.

I'll start a timer.

[She notices this little dance with Gustave, the way he moves around subjects like he's drawing a box around it that he can't himself cross. He's always done it, to some degree, but it feels more obvious now that the thing they're avoiding is right between them, rather than some uncomfortable other. Are you thinking of dating her, sorry that made your day so frustrating, wasn't it annoying the way Alan said that––

Talking about themselves is so different now.]

Incredibly. I only have my cards back so far, and I feel like I have all this extra energy and nothing to spend it on. The minute it's back, I'm dragging you and Maelle down to spar.

I'm sure she'll appreciate that. You know she's always up for a duel.

[ Although most of Maelle's comments in that direction have felt a little like they were said more for form's sake than anything else. He doesn't think she's all that interested in fighting him, right now; not really.

Sciel might be another story entirely, depending. ]

And who wouldn't appreciate a training session with the reigning Gestral champion?

Oh, she loves it when I put my back into it. Gets her real competitive.

[Maelle’s been having too many mid-afternoon naps to claim she isn’t bored. More adrenaline would do her good.

Sciel takes another swig, this one feeling like liquid courage, even if it comes out a little gentle:]

Would you want to?

It could only help. I've hardly picked up my sword since I came here.

[ His memories of that arrival are foggy, and that's probably for the best: dropped immediately from battling Renoir — and losing — directly into another arena. He'd acted on instinct, reflexes that had been trained into him almost down to the bone, but since then...?

His right hand flexes, empty of a sword hilt. Someone further along the bar taps their bottle on the wood, and it rings in his head like the sound of a cane on stone. ]

But I doubt you'll find me much of a challenge anymore. Maybe you'll be able to teach me some new moves.

[She turns her head to him completely, a pinch to her brow, her tone lighthearted.]

Oh, come on. You can outsmart me just as quickly now as you ever could. I was always a heavier hitter than you.

[Her weapon alone outweighs the rest of the team's put together, Monoco's staff aside, and it is a thing to be reckoned with. She cuts a wide path and does not stop moving once she's started, and the blade goes wherever it happens to connect mid-swing. But it isn't the same as his tactical genius, his prowess at finding the exact right place to strike, the most efficient way to end a fight. He can still win, even if it'd be a war of attrition. She's sure of it.]

I think it'll make you feel good.

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