cloakandclaw | [Millways] By the Lake

Much like the days when he first got to this place, he finds that the trees by the lake soothe him. It's a stubborn door that refuses to open, even under the threat of emergence by a planetary elemental: there's nothing he can do about it. No stranger to disappointment and to captivity, he knows he has little choice but to wait it out. If this is where he's destined to be, then... he will have to do his atonement from a distance and remain separated from his beloved.

Tonight, he's crouched on a low oak branch overlooking the lake. It suits him; it suits his mood; it suits his need for silent observation. The night is crisp and chill, but it doesn't bother him: he's neither warm nor cold. The neutrality of temperature he felt on the boat he took to the western continent is nothing new but being home again served to reinforce it for him. Still, he refuses to give thanks to Chaos, who he still likes to see as an unwelcome intruder to his solitude.

To his thoughts of the past, and of Lucrecia, and of home: does Chaos share his thoughts? Feel what he feels? He doesn't know: his memories of time in that form are very poor indeed. It's almost as if he wasn't even there.

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He almost says I try to will the red out of my eyes; I like to think that some morning I'll wake up and look in the mirror and see brown eyes looking back just like I used to but he doesn't: he's never told that secret to a single soul -- not even Lucrecia -- and he won't give it away now. Maya's question is fair, although he finds he's having a hard time putting a viable answer to it.

As he often does, he gives the question a good amount of contemplation and consideration. The lake water ripples gently; there's a general rustle to the leaves. Overhead, moonlight filters in to where they sit.

In the end his answer is simple and inarguable.

"I... live."

It's something he has a hard time not doing, seemingly. "Making a study of this place has proved to be a... fairly good use of time." The trees and forest are places he takes particular interest in; he nods toward them. "The grounds are... deceptive."

Maya watches the forest, for a moment; the wind rustles through the leaves, which she hears better than sees in the dark, but they don't look particularly strange.

"Deceptive?" she asks, and she looks back at Vincent. "How so?"

Nodding subtly toward the trees, he frowns. "The distance is deceptive. One can walk through there for hours and not get anywhere, or be back where he started. Even following a straight and true line, the results are unpredictable."

He's a trained tracker; he knows what he's doing when he assesses an environment. It's something he had to excel at with the Turks and it's an ability he knows he hasn't lost. "The same thing holds true if one travels at the treetop level." Or above it, but he doesn't need to tell her he can fly. He's still getting used to that one himself.

"You can wind up where you started without making a complete circuit. I don't think this... asteroid we're on is very large -- there are times when the bend in the horizon is so marked and so evident -- but the distances are... nontraditional."

Perhaps that's a better way to put it than deceptive.

"...Strange," muses Maya quietly, taking a longer look at the trees. "Though maybe not expected, given how impossible this place is."

She runs her fingers through the sand beside her. "It can't be helpful for getting lost in there, either, always winding up where you've started."

The laugh he lets out is small and tight and bitter. On most people it would probably be mistaken for a sound of disgust but... he doesn't laugh very much and as such is out of practice with it.

I lost myself. It's one of the first thoughts he remembers having after he woke up on Hojo's operating table, looking down to see what he'd become. He hoped it was a nightmare but... wakeful reality has proved otherwise. There are days when he's capable of little more than sitting curled up in the corner of a room, his hands around his knees, his head buried against the light because the light points out all that he's become and reminds him of all that he's lost. As hard as he tries not to fall prey to that sort of behavior, there are times he just... can't help it. He doesn't claim to have things worse than anybody else, but... there are moments -- fortunately few and far between -- when he can't stand the circumstances of his life for another minute.

The only thing he fears is actually losing himself in those moments. Whatever it is that keeps Chaos at bay... well, he's been lucky for the most part.

So far.

He turns to Maya Antares, the woman with the name like a poem, and studies her by the light of the moon. "I think... if someone really wants to get lost, it's not that hard. Even in a place where the distance moves in deceptive ways."

Breathe, Vincent, Breathe. It appears to be the key ingredient to maintaining a semblance of balance.

Maya blinks, though only once; she can never tell where the conversation is going to go, when she talks to this man. Her eyebrows rise, just a little bit.

"Do you want to get lost, Vincent?"

Her original assumption was 'no,' though -- you never know.

Now there's a question he chooses not to answer: it's so personal and deep he's absolutely disinterested in discussing it in any depth whatsoever. If it were his choice, he would be so much more than lost.

He'd be dead. He never asked to be... reborn, reanimated: the taste he had of death was comfort enough in a vast sea of unhappiness and... the concept of being lost is tempting. But like death, it's something Chaos won't allow for him: in all his travels across his home world, he's unerringly put one foot in front of the other and moved swiftly and effectively toward his target. At first he thought it was a remnant of old Turks training but he's learned differently. Chaos's sense of direction is unerring, flawless, and brings him where he -- it -- wants to go... at least on his own planet.

When he turns to answer Maya, he's impassive as ever. Thoughts burn, but they do so privately. "Everybody does, from time to time."

That's what he'll admit to at the moment.

"And you?"

In the lake, something -- some creature -- laps at the surface rhythmically. The sound is almost soothing.

Maya is lost. She has been ever since the burning sands of Kar Dathra's Gate, even if she hasn't always been ready to admit it.

Her eyes flick away swiftly, to the lake. She tucks her legs gracefully underneath herself, and there's quiet (disquieted, under the surface, though not really due to the question or the subject) good humor on her face when she looks back at Vincent. "Everybody does, from time to time."

"Touché." There's a moment of companionable silence during which the both of them simply... look out over the lake. There's no need for words to fill the silence -- it's not an uncomfortable silence -- but eventually he turns back toward Maya and nods.

"I think... I'll give it another try."

Getting lost in the woods here seems to be as valid a thing to aim for as anything else. The worst that will happen is... he'll get lost. And then Chaos or some other form will wake up from deep slumber, tap at his thoughts, and direct him back to where he needs to be.

It happens every time.

"A good evening to you, Maya Antares." As he stands, the cloak rustles around his legs for a minute before billowing out behind him. For now he'll walk, but it's one of his few pleasures to soar from treetop to treetop in this place.

As long as he's alone.

Maya's eyebrows rise, just a little, but she lifts one hand in a wave. "I'll see you around, Vincent."

With her enigmatic companion gone, she turns her attention back to the ripples of wind-on-water across the lake. She glances at the shard of glass resting in the sand beside her, and one side of her mouth tilts upward.

Maya pushes sand with one finger, building the walls around the glass just a little bit higher.

[Millways] By the Lake

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