Straw Men Fall Apart

AOMRocks20-08/21/2016

Lorenzo sighed, sheathing his heavy sword to lean against the training dummy. The straw-and-wood enemy had many punctures and gashes in it, the yellow-clad knight almost mindlessly repeating the same strikes and bashes against the dummy. He wiped the rapidly-arriving sweat from his brow and sighed again.

LadyDeme-08/21/2016

Delphine had been idly wandering the military grounds; she couldn't quite have explained her reasons, not without a moment's preperations to invent some. This was life, now. She was dressed in a sucroat with a long back and a short front, with tights a shade darker than her hair. It was a good outfoot for running around, for activity -- though she hadn't come here to train. Rather, she came to observe -- she even had her staff with her if she needed to, a pretty, ornate item she might have taken from her grandfather's house. She'd left a note. And, on her observation, she stumbled on Lorenzo, repeating his swings almost as if he expected a different result from them. "Is everything OK, Lorrie?" She called out from the sort of safe distance taken by someone who didn't quite feel safe near the swing of a weapon.

AOMRocks20-08/21/2016

Lorenzo looked up. He smiled as his eyes met Delphine's, throwing out a tired wave to her. "Delphine... Hello... Fine...!" He huffed, voice ragged and heavy from the hours' training.

LadyDeme-08/21/2016

She leaned forward, a skeptical smirk on her face. "Are you sure? You sound like you've been hard at work for quite a while here, like a man driven to distraction. I think the poor dummy's shuffled off this mortal coil." It looked like it was halfway ready to become sausages at this point -- sausages for a teddy bear, maybe, but then again -- they were always stuffed. As she pondered the pun, she walked over to him, now that there was no longer quite so many sword swings afoot.

AOMRocks20-08/21/2016

"Oh, surely. But as long as it still stands, I'll be able to practice on it." He grinned--a tired grin, mostly. His chestpiece shifted slightly with his breaths.

LadyDeme-08/21/2016

"Barbaric. What a savage is man, to be so unsatisfied with but the corspe of a foe." Her choice of word has a touch of laughter to it. "Come take a moment to get your breath back, though. He's not going to fall apart more if you stop to catch your breath."

AOMRocks20-08/21/2016

He chuckles. "Bah. Straw's never been alive anyway. One of the only reasons we can hack it to death so handily." He shoves the dummy, regaining his balance on his own two feet.

LadyDeme-08/21/2016

"Straw was alive as stalks of wheat, once... Though I think it's a bit too far to weep for fallen grasses." She shrugs, the whole matter rolling off her like water from a duck's back. "Honestly, I think you might fall over before it does."

AOMRocks20-08/21/2016

"Yes? Well... being stuffed in a bag does sound rather nice right now... if a bit hot." He huffs, planting his hands on his hips. "Though if I didn't train like this, I couldn't kill anyone, could I?"

LadyDeme-08/21/2016

"If you're thinking you'll be better off in a bag then on your feet, it's definitely time for a break," she insisted, and cast her eyes about for a good enough surface to sit on. "You can't very well... Shuffle others off their mortal coils, push them from this veil of tears, and so on, if you work until you drop, either." Delphine might have been a little uncomfortable with the contemplation of the matter -- though she hardly wanted to admit it. She spotted a fence that seperated a small 'arena' of space, suitable for a match, and walked to it, vaulting up to sit on the edge as she might any other fence.

AOMRocks20-08/21/2016

Lorenzo lumbered over to the fence, tried to copy Delphine, and grunted. His armor did not permit him to get onto the fence, so he simply leaned on it. "Yes, well... there's little replacement for a hard's day work of training, is there? It becomes a habit, and when you stray from habits, you start performing worse, and in that case, you die. I always train this hard."

LadyDeme-08/21/2016

"I suppose you must do what works for you, huh?" She said, unsually pensive-sounding. She was, after all, not a soldier -- and not really cut out of a soldier's work. She knew it; there was little harm in trusting his own judgement. "Seeing you make that same swing like that, I was worried...Well... Given the times, that you were swinging out troubles instead of refining your strike. I find the former never does any good when it's the mind that's preoccupied."

AOMRocks20-08/21/2016

"Swinging out troubles, mm?" Lorenzo smirks. To Delphine, perhaps, it's a joking, dismissive smile, but as he mulled over the statement, the knight saw it as serpentine. He laughs. "What do you take me for?"

LadyDeme-08/21/2016

"Someone whose homeland is no longer counted among countries," she says with a sort of amused chuffing sound. Like it wasn't obvious what troubles could be had, given the situation at hand. But perhaps she was underestimating the others. "Honestly, given the weakness Floribar was crushed for, is it so surprising if a Floribian soldier turned to obsession? Then again, I suppose if you got obsessed with your distractions, you might refine your verse -- I'll keep an eye out if you start writing ideas on the walls, ok?"

AOMRocks20-08/21/2016

Lorenzo raised his eyebrows, sustaining the smirk. "Oh, delightful. I belong in a hospital, and I don't even know it. Though I don't believe that training this harshly is obsession. It's more... trying to stay above the masses."

LadyDeme-08/21/2016

"As I said, it's only what I was worried about. From a distance, you seemed like a man possessed." She waved a hand idly, motioning to the rather sad state of the straw dummy. On a slightly more teasing note, she added, "...Well, I'm you'll manage. Though... that armor is rather hard to get airborne, though, isn't it? You might need a seige weapon if you're going to get above people."

AOMRocks20-08/21/2016

He chuckles. "I don't think I could even get above this fence. If I really wanted to get into the air, I couldn't use this in battle."

LadyDeme-08/21/2016

"Then you'll might want to settle for simply being a better swordsman," It wasn't as if she cared much for terms like 'above the masses,' though she knew he hardly meant it that way. "Though, you know... I did meet someone interesting today. She's a nice Ethysian girl. Maybe a wyvern could get you up into the air."

August 22, 2016

AOMRocks20-08/22/2016

"Gods. Me, on a wyvern? I'm not sure I would know who would control who, there." He shakes his head.

LadyDeme-08/22/2016

She snickered at the very notion; Maybe it was just the effect of the armor, but it was a little hard to picture Lorenzo airborne in any way. "Well, it wouldn't have to control you necessarily. Really, it could just do whatever it wanted without any regard... But you're best down here with the rest of us, I think."

AOMRocks20-08/22/2016

He nods. "Certainly. I was trained in using horses, but I'm at my strongest when I'm on my own two feet."

LadyDeme-08/22/2016

"Well, it seems I've managed my objective -- you can manage a full sentence's worth of air," she pointed out with obvious satisfaction that during their talk, the worst of his breathlessness had receeded. "You might just be ready to return to being the nightmare of straw men everywhere. Scarecrows will quake in terror at your merciless advance."(edited)

AOMRocks20-08/22/2016

A chuckle. "You're tempting me to spout another meter-mutilated verse."

LadyDeme-08/22/2016

She bounced a little in her seat on the edge of the fence, a big smile on her face. "Well? Please do. Your humble audience awaits."(edited)

August 25, 2016

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

Lorenzo huffed. "I'm thinking, I'm thinking. Rushing me tends to lead to meter mess-ups. Let's see..." He rubs his chin. "...Such as the farmer binds them into bales, I am the one who separates straw men, cleaving the grassy brethren into parts."

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

"Very nice, very nice... But I clearly shouldn't have rushed you," she said with a fond shake of her head. "The word choice is really fine, though. I'd say maybe.. 'although the farmer binds their straw to bales for the first bit..." She says, her voice falling into a relaxing sing-song, hitting her thigh with her hand on the stresses, almost like someone clapping to a song. Her brow furrows as she tries to consider iambic pentameter on the second portion. "The one who cuts the men of straw 'tis I... And so on. This is why I favor rhyme and device to meter, personally."

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

"Ah, yes, yes... do you have something to write on you?" He begins patting down his armor--something that seemed compulsive. In truth, his actions had become a habit when he need to find his book.

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

"But of course." She pulled out a small booklet she had chained to her belt, for just such an occaison. This one actually did have contents besides her own writing, but details, details. Everything was better off with notes. She passed this and from a purse that likewise she attached to her belt produced a stick of charcoal, and passed them over to him.(edited)

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

"Ah, thank you... where, where... Ah! There it is." He wiggled the book out from under a leg, taking the stick of charcoal and flipping through his journal. "Empty page, empty page, where are you..."

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

She took back her own little booklet, since he'd found his, and re-attached it to its little silver chain on her hip, and listened to him look through his own journal with a smile.

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

"Hrrm... Ha, there we are." He finally found an empty page, beginning to scribble in his phrase, with Delphine's correction under it. "Right... why a chain, by the way?"

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

"Hm... Because the clip was made with the chain," she said, pulling the book to the chain's limit to show it off a little more clearly -- the book itself was held onto the chain by a clip, which could be removed from the book. The chain itself wasn't a big mass of heavy links, but rather a thin chain, which sparkled in the straw-dust filled sunlight. "I had a few with ribbons to make them easy to carry like this, but the clip and chain and the book were presents." If the past-tense hurt, she didn't acknowledge it; her words flowed easily and fluidly, even if it implied disaster. Her expression may have softened, a little -- her smile less delighted, and more wistful. She'd had a variety of sizes and modes of binding of books in the past -- and she had kept a few of the more travel-ready ones with her, all the while.(edited)

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

As Lorenzo finished his writing, he shut the book promptly with one hand and passed the black stub to Delphine. "There we are. Who'd you get the presents from? I don't recall giving you them." He glances down at his armor for a loose crevice to stick the journal into.

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

"I do have other friends, you know," She said, chuckling without harshness. She waved a hand airly, the accepted charcoal shedding a few pieces of black dust with the gesture. She wrapped it in a piece of scratch-paper and put it back amongst her coins and odds and ends. "The book was from Carolyn and the rest of the day kitchen -- she's the mother hen down there, and she pulled the rest of the girls in to try and pool around her gift idea even if I said they didn't need to do anything, but the clip and chain were from Maurice, our seneschal." He'd have likely met Maurice if he'd have come down to Amarana once in his life (Delphine sometimes spoke as if he were her personal nemesis, or she his) -- but the rest of it was just gossip about people he wouldn't have known. Still, that sort of thing was common in her letters, full of whatever-goings on were plentiful. She talked brightly, reflecting on that birthday some time ago.(edited)

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

"It's not that I don't think you have other friends, it's that I thought the only chains that you would be sent would be bigger, for the purposes of attaching to someone, you know. Although that'd be more a present for your parents, wouldn't it?" He leaned on the fence, jamming the book back where he pulled it out. "Awfully nice of your servants. I never got anything from mine."(edited)

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

"That's a point -- but no. Lines are in the water, but we haven't taken a bite yet. The Ice Queen's worried about getting it right; she's once bitten, twice shy I suppose. I suspect she'll be trying to find a nice, strong chain when she learns where I am." Delphine laughed. After all, Ianthe had no intention of not getting the best marriage possible for her daughter; nor, as a matter of fact, did she intend to simply leave her exiled child to wander freely about the countryside getting into war. No, she was going to flip her lid. ...That, and everyone was a bit afraid of what would happen when it came time to marry Delphine off. She was something of a prickly catch. Given Lorenzo's first comment, she couldn't help but smile wryly -- she probably could get him to fluster by pointing out what it'd mean if he was trying to remember if he'd given her such a chain. But nah. She'd play nice. "I'd rather some of them not -- it seems like such a waste of their money... But they say 'turn about is fair play, young mistress,' and then I can't say anything to that..." She shrugged. Her fingers wrapped around the chain until there were little red imprints on her skin.

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

"Hmm." He nodded, pausing. "An odd present by itself, though. 'Ho, milady Delphine, I bestow upon you thusly, on your day of birth--this small chain'!" He made exaggerated, joking gestures.

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

"And I thanked him, of course, with a demure curtsey and a 'Oh, I am most grateful for your splendid gift, Sir Maurice,' amongst the well-mannered admirers who were paying me respectful homage, before retiring to my chambers like a delicate lady." She laughed in a mock-swoon. It had been... Not at all like that, of course. Well, she had been grateful. That was true. In a less hoity-toity tone, she added, "Frankly, I'm a little amazed myself. It wasn't his usual style. I mean, the book that originally went with this chain was on decorum. Yeah, real subtle, Maurie. But I mean, that he respected that I'd like something like this. It's not too odd -- think about it, a necklace is just jewelry on a small chain. So a book clip's not so different."

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

"Well, yes, I would say. Except a the jewel in there has great value."

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

"Precisely -- it really is a nice gift for me, at least, even if it's only good with rather light and durable volumes," she said with a nod. She turned the book and clip over, causing the chain to turn this way and that, the jewelry-like links moving from shadow to light and light to shadow like a serpent's scales. The book was just the smallest bit larger than her hand, though fairly thick; a good size for a travelling volume. "This one's a perfect match for it."(edited)

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

Lorenzo rolls his eyes. "Hmm. The book looks almost the size of mine. Your servants have good taste."

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

"Mama C's taste is... Not always my style, but when she gets it right, she gets it right," Delphine said for emphasis. She folded the book -- which was, in fact, a set of little philosophical, often moral, little verses. Some of it, idealogically, was a little dry and stoic -- but the writing itself had some beautiful words that Delphine was fond of. A thought ran across her mind that she clamped down on, and went on. I wonder what the worms think of Maurie's ta-- "I never liked the way she could push the rest of the crew around -- especially not after Margie left to get married (now Margie, that's good taste) -- but it did usually work out."(edited)

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

"Mmm. Who was Margie?"

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

"Margie was a cook as well -- she could do these really fantastic things with pies. We're talking Magnificent, Ambrosial, Radiant, Great, Ideal, and practically Enlightening!" She grinned at her little acrostic efforts before she continued, "My goodness, could she bake," she leaned back on her little seat on the fence, now more behind than over it -- a sort of precarious balance. She looked up, beyond the walls of the military buildings. "She was quiet, but she was so no-nonsense -- Mama C could never get her to fold and do things Carolyn's way at all, and it could make the rest of the crew a little mutinous sometimes. It was great to watch, since there's really not much stopping her from getting her way all the time otherwise."(edited)

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

"Really?" Lorenzo shuffles a bit closer. "You seem to know an awful lot about your servants."

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

"Of course I want to know about the people around me." It was that sort of attitude -- that there was some essential difference, some barrier, between those born noble and those born without; as if the people who worked around you were somehow not worthy of your consideration -- that drove her nearly up the wall sometimes. Her tone was a little more serious than normal. In the end, though, she smirked, making her meaning a little harder to read right away; or she almost hoped it did. "They say it, too -- 'turnabout is fair play.' I'm not more worthy of their attention than they are of mine."(edited)

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

He shrugs. "I know that, but... there are a lot of them."

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

"That's true," she admitted, relenting on her harder-than-normal stance. There was a reason she sometimes reffered to the day kitchen crew as, well, the kitchen crew. When you weren't talking about someone specific, there were too many people to talk about in one breath. "I don't know everything about everyone, or anything. But Maurice worked there since before I was born. I always thought he'd be there after I was dead." It was not to be, she was sure of it -- but she shrugged and rolled her eyes, like she would have a year ago. She didn't even take a breath before she continued, her energy building up in her words, her hands and face moving through expressions at a clip as her feelings shifted away from things that could be allowed to hurt her. "And I like people. I kept up with you after all. In every heart there's brilliant beauty; in every soul hard-fought hate. All caught through a prism, throwing their own patterns up onto the world. How can I not want to see as much of it as I'm able?"(edited)

AOMRocks20-08/25/2016

Lorenzo leans on the fence, frowning. She's oddly poetic after she starts talking about him. "Really? You miss him?"

LadyDeme-08/25/2016

Delphine stared for a second, breathless, a single royal blue eyebrow cocked incredulously. What sort of question was that. No, no, people who had to fled their homelands and everyone they loved -- totally uncertain question, if they missed them. Of course, it was Delphine, to whom the world was all for fun. And so was this. Hilarious. "...Damn, Lorenzo. What sort of question -- What do you think?" She managed, just a second more, to sound needling and sarcastic and disbeliving. She laughed. She laughed. Her shoulders shook. Her breath retreated into her throat, coming in and out as a sort of staccato way that might have sounded like a laugh. She wished that he hadn't asked that. She wished that he'd kept it away -- maybe she wished he'd gone on fighting his straw dummy to begin with. "...Of course I do. I miss them all." She stared helplessly up into the crisp blue sky. It was a perfect, cloudless blue -- there was nothing about that could be distorted or blurred; still, there was definitely something, filtering out the sky, just a few shades brighter than her hair. "I miss my home"

August 27, 2016

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 7:12 PM

Lorenzo nodded, tone suddenly more somber. "I am sure, Delphine. I miss my home as well. At some points, I forgot whether it is in a barony or in a barracks."

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 7:35 PM

She refused to look at him for a moment as her hands busied themselves across her face. In the end, she supposed a soldier like him could think about these matters rather cooly. She was probably being stupid, crying over something as inevitable as death. "...Yeah, I could see that. What about a Barracks in a Barony?" she asked, her voice steadying itself, a smile appearing on her face again -- like someone had placed it there. The home she had lost wasn't a place, so this was easier to bounce around with.

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 7:38 PM

Lorenzo leans on the fence post, staring into her eyes, lost in thought. Joking... Displacing those serious moments with poetry... it's almost exactly what I am going through. Delphine...

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 7:45 PM

The eyes he were staring into were still just a little misty. She blinked a few times, until they cleared a little. She felt foolish, but it just went to show how really unprepared she was. It was a good thing that she'd come out here. She slid off the fencepost in a single east motion, her smile relaxing into something a bit more fluid. "Well, you'll be seeing plenty of barracks, my friend."

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 8:00 PM

"Yes... yes..." His gaze continues into her, and almost past her, seeming a bit distant.

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 8:08 PM

"...Do you want to talk about it? It's been some hard, crazy, scary stuff happening." She asked, looking over at him with some concern. That distance wasn't like him -- and it wasn't like she could leave a guy hurting. She placed a hand on one of his shoulderpads.(edited)

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 8:11 PM

"...Delphine, I... may I be honest?" He gives her a gentle, serious look.

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 8:12 PM

"Of course, wasn't I asking you to?" She asked with a single raised brow.

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 8:13 PM

"My problem is that I need to counter your other question with itself."

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 8:26 PM

"Phhht. I mean, you know..." She shrugged expressively, her arms wide. And she faltered a little. ".. I might never see them again. Any of them." It was hard not to picture, in that moment, the sight of a field of corpses -- her father's head on a pike, the tongue black, the eyes lolling. There'd been birds at it, deterred only by the soldiers who occaisonally would shake it, reminding them that it'd be them next. Her expression wavered, a nervous trembling at the corner of her heart. "...Maybe I shouldn't be so worried. I mean, we've all got to say goodbye sometime? If I never see any of them again, it's probably on me. So it'll be fine from my end." She offered that last bit as her own consolation -- sure, some of them were going to be dead already. Those happy days might be gone forever. But hey -- she was more likely to be dead than all of them together. These terms were, if not acceptable, then just funny enough.(edited)

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 8:34 PM

Lorenzo nods. "You seek to... distract yourself from it, it appears."

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 8:38 PM

She sighed a little, settling. "Not exactly. I mean, I'm here, aren't I? But I can't be one dimensional about my feelings, either." She waved a hand, trying to capture in its reach the vastness of the cosmos -- this ugly and strange and beautiful world. "I'd go crazy if I didn't really enjoy that the spin of dear fortuna's wheel can make the world into a beautiful kalediscope -- even if it's crushing me underfoot."

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 8:41 PM

"Fortune, of course. It's fortune that impacts us."

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 8:50 PM

"A bit, yeah. I mean, one can still blame the cruelties of men and gods cruel -- but what made men cruel, and what put you, particularly, in their path? If I was born in Ethysia, what difference would the suffering of a few Florbibian peasants, knights, and counts matter to me? I'd have a whole new set of miseries, and none of my own; if that bastard Gaulter hadn't been born in Ethysia, maybe this war would have never begun -- and he could live happily catching fish near Arcia. Dominating a bunch of ship-hands for his life." There were a million examples just like this. In the end, so many things came down to chance -- and so many things were out of the control of one person. It was hard to get too angry, for being the one who, having been born into happiness, was placed by the position of her birth into sorrow now. Besides... She narrowed her eyes and gave him a sort of wry smile, speaking more casually now as if she was shifting gears. "Fortune isn't a single, concrete thing, you know. The wheel itself is just a metaphor. A metaphor for how stupid and cruel and fickle all the great intricacies of our world can be."(edited)

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 8:52 PM

"...oh, apologies. I had confused fortune for fate."

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 8:55 PM

Delphine laughed; it was an honest one, in the end. The thought of allowing herself to be resigned to fate. "...Oh, oh heavens, no -- I can't tolerate philosophers who whine about fate," she said with a bit of a laugh. The idea rendered the whole of existence frankly pointless, so there was no sense in acting like a preordained plan existed, in her opinion.

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 8:56 PM

He rolled his eyes. "Of course, of course. But 'fortune' is just a fancy word for 'blind luck' and 'chance', isn't it?"

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 8:57 PM

"Yes it is; doesn't make it a bad one for it." She said with a smile. " We deal in fancy words, do we not? And there's no denying that chance counts for something -- which is unfortunate...And fortunate, too. By the whole definition of it."(edited)

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 8:58 PM

"Ah, yes, we do. Though random chance is a small part, I feel."

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 9:25 PM

"What a comforting notion," she said. She was imagining what her fisherman-emperor -- or, rather, all the fishermen who could have been emperors, had the world been a little different. All the fishermen who could have been not born at all, frankly. In the end, she supposed, it was like fate -- what difference did it make, if it was big or small; the world was the same either way. Hardly an answer to examine, though. "I think it's better to think that, whether chance is big or small in this world... That we have to act on it; it's too unthinking to simply let run ramshackle over everything."(edited)

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 10:20 PM

"I am not sure I agree. Standing idly by in the face of something damaging is not just; but that doesn't mean we should move to stop good things happening due to random chance."

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 10:26 PM

"...That's what I'm saying, silly," She said, waving a finger. "We have to make the good things better; kinder. We have to protect against the bad. Chance is only opportunties."

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 10:27 PM

"Yes, yes. ...Sometimes I wonder if it's true or not for someone to draw a perfect circle when you talk in them so freely."

LadyDeme-Last Saturday at 10:31 PM

"I'm afraid you lost me there. You said you didn't agree with me; I think you did, and reiterated for clarity. It's a bit repetitive, but it's hardly circular." She thought she understood what it meant, but the matter of someone drawing a perfect circle being true or not -- well, that was a bit of a strange move to make, conversationally. Not that she hadn't made stranger. Talks like this were exatly what she meant, though. Already, she was smiling more brightly. The world was just a slightly better place, from talking about something as abstract and silly as the tides of fortune. Though something about that comment was perhaps a touch concerning. "Are you mad? Or bored with me already? I can get out of your hair, if you'd rather."(edited)

AOMRocks20-Last Saturday at 10:44 PM

"No, no. It's not that your talking is circular, it's that you're talking circles around me, in that you speak at a higher level than I comprehend at first."

August 28, 2016

LadyDeme-Last Sunday at 12:41 PM

She felt a little silly at getting worried over a single ambigious statement -- but oh, well. It wasn't as if she wasn't silly sometimes. Instead she nodded gratefully. "Why, thank you! I do make it a point. I think you're capable of keeping up, though."(edited)

August 29, 2016

AOMRocks20-Last Monday at 1:10 AM

"Oh, well, thank you." He chuckles.

LadyDeme-Last Monday at 9:07 AM

"You're welcome," She responded brightly... But then she sighed, a little. She gestured to everything around her. He was worried before she got him on this tangent, and as fun a tangent it was, it seemed a little cruel. She could, as he said, talk circles around her. And just because she could doesn't mean she should just take advantage of it. " So much to think about -- some of it really nice. But no...If my goal was really to just distract myself from things that are... Frightful, or Dreadful, or Sorrowful... Well. I could have done that in Arcias. It has all the things a girl could want." Except, of course, the things she really did want. She smiled bitterly. Part of her envied her mother, seemingly able to cast aside the destruction of so much of what she'd done over the past years as if it was merely a trifle -- able to, without fear, or without pain, move on. Of course, part of her also felt it kind of made her mother a monster -- so what can you do? She shrugged. "I'll be OK, or I won't, or whichever. Who knows just yet? I'm just going to have to... Keep moving forward, for the time being. "(edited)

AOMRocks20-Last Monday at 4:38 PM

Lorenzo sighed, frowning. "I see. It is hard not to agree with you, especially considering what I have dealt with through my years away... We are still... going to help each other, if the other isn't necessarily... 'OK', right?" He folded his arms, wanting confirmation.

LadyDeme-Last Monday at 5:27 PM

The uncertainty, the gravity of that question made her smile -- somewhat happily. Somewhat sadly -- a kaledescope of feeling, expanding outward from that little moment, blending and blurring ideas together. She hadn't intended to need comfort -- but she was glad, in a way, she had it. Because she could hold it back, store it away, move forward today. But probably not every day. "Of course," she said, some of the more energetic tones of her voice having worn away, leaving something soft and sincere behind. And then, more cheerfully, "I made you take a break because I was worried, right? That's one step ahead."

AOMRocks20-Last Monday at 6:18 PM

A chuckle. "And I spent my break worrying about you. Though I do have to get back to training at some point..."

LadyDeme-Last Monday at 6:57 PM

"Then I will insist -- go forth and fell straw men with silver'd blade, prepare for war or verse still yet unsaid," She tapped her staff on the ground with her rhythm, emphasiszing the set of da-DUM da-Dums that ran threw her words, for effect. The rhyme was rather slant, but she had some confidence in the effect anyway, and so she began to sashay away, waving over her shoulder. "I"m sure you'll be able to see the terror in his reeds before you're through. Farewell!"(edited)

AOMRocks20-Last Monday at 7:07 PM

He waves. "See you later, Delphine!"

LadyDeme-Last Monday at 7:28 PM

==END RP==