thenearshore | [closed] I'm A What?

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[closed] I'm A What?

Who: Demyx and Kija
What: Introductions
Where: Kija’s Temple
When: Backdated to shortly after Demyx’s arrival
Warnings: Sheer idiocy. Frustration.

[ So... tired...

Rubbing his blue-green eyes incessantly, Demyx has been wandering for what seems like an eternity, stumbling aimlessly through landscape unfamiliar, yet not alarming. He doesn’t feel particularly lost per se, but he couldn’t pinpoint his location on a map, either; in fact, if he’d just used one of those, perhaps he wouldn’t be where he is right now.

But, hindsight is always crystal clear, as they say; and it’s too late to chide himself for his own mistakes anyway, even if he was a fan of self-discipline whatsoever, (which, spoilers: he’s not). So he shuffles onward, blearily eyeing his surroundings without sincerely noting them at all, running on fumes quickly evaporating. He’s about ready to drop before he senses some sort of... light at the end of the tunnel? Something like that.

For whatever reason, there’s a pull, a kind of draw to this place not unlike a magnet. The closer he gets to it, the more it welcomes him; warm; like he could stay a while, to say the least. What it is, he can’t say; he’s never seen anything quite like it before. But there are stairs leading up to what appears to be the main entrance, and... yeah, Demyx doesn’t have the energy for that left. (Honestly, it’s questionable whether or not he would on his best days.)

So he plops down onto the nearest front step... and promptly topples over.

By the time he’s found, he’ll be curled up snoozing on the temple’s front steps, snoring lightly and likely drooling from one corner of his mouth. Adorable, right? Right. ]

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[Privately, Kija is still entirely entranced by taps.

[A tap, he has discovered, is a small metal pipe with a spigot on it that sticks out of walls at just above hand height, and when you open the spigot water comes rushing out. Clear, fresh, and in apparently such supply that it just sort of comes out and then vanishes down a hole unless you actively try and stop it with a metal disc. And then there's another one right next to it that does the same thing, except this one has a red mark on it and that means the water somehow knows to come out hot. Just like that, like it's absolutely no trouble at all. And they're everywhere! You don't even have to go outside.

[The problem is, everyone else seems to take them absolutely for granted. In much the same way as one cannot discuss how much they enjoy things like putting things on tables and sleeping (another wonder, after months of travel and waking up to find some portion of, say, Shin-ah draped where Kija would honestly rather Shin-ah wasn't) in a bed, it simply is not possible to stop someone on the street and remind them of how absolutely, mind-blowingly wonderful what he has been reliably informed is known as indoor plumbing is.

[Which is what he's doing when he gets the feeling he should probably be somewhere else: spending entirely too long about washing his hands because seriously, this is amazing--

[Except he needs to be outside right now, because... Kija isn't really sure on that last part. Something is nagging at the edge of his mind, something that insists it is extremely important, running another bath simply because you can and this is amazing can wait, there is something important you need to be doing. Which simply cannot be right because the Princess is, apparently, nowhere at all and there is nothing to do but wait until she finds her way to him. Again. Even so, he needs to be outside.

[Which is when he discovers there is a total stranger asleep on the steps of what everyone insists on calling his temple but is very clearly just a nice house.

[Should he poke him? That is not very polite. Maybe talking will work.]

Um. Excuse me. Are you feeling quite well?

[And why am I getting the impression I should understand exactly what you're doing here and what I am meant to do as a consequence, person who I am absolutely certain I have never seen in my life because I am sure I would absolutely recognize the hair cut if nothing else?

[How do you get hair to do that, anyway?]

[ Talking does work, in fact, which would perhaps be a bit surprising to anyone who, in a past they may or may not remember, might've had to toss a bucket of cold water on the nobody to rouse him. Good thing Kija's spared that, (although those taps he's so pleased about would've come in real handy, if things had gone that route). Regardless, Demyx sputters awake none-too-quickly, yawning and stretching and swiping at the corner of his mouth with the back of a hand before rubbing his bleary eyes into focus. What's going on? ]

...Huh? Wh--...where am I?

[ And for that matter, who's talking to him?

He does a quick pan around of the area, blinking kittenishly up at... someone he's never seen before, most definitely. But that's no surprise. This place is full of people who fall into that category. No -- what makes this person unique is a feeling that strikes him for the first time since arriving here; one that seems to say he should know this person, somehow.

So he squints, blinks more with that sleep-fogged gaze. ]

Who are you?

[ So he's a little obtuse; so what? At least he's cute! And his hair is art, okay? IT. IS. ART. ]

[Should I not be asking that question, strange person who appears to be setting up camp in what I can only assume this place has designated to be my doorway.

[Except that he is getting the distinct impression that there is something very similar about this encounter. Someone - whoever is in charge here, and someone must be - has very deliberately engineered things so that this young man and his impossible hair (no, really, how do you get it to do that?) should be reclining in his doorway rather than in anybody else's, and that as much as anything leaves him more than a little uncertain as to how he should proceed.

[Well, he could start by answering the young man's questions.]

Kija. This is my house. I live here.

[House. Temple. You do not live in a temple. It is a house.

[And... and for a moment he has no idea what to do from there. Something is supposed to be happening, he is sure of that, and yet for some reason the only thing that he can think he should be doing is - is making tea, or something. At the very least getting him off the doorstep. That is certainly a part of it: this man is absolutely supposed to come inside.]

Um, do you wish to come indoors? It - is exceedingly warm today.

[ Kija? He’s never heard that name before in his life. Yet, it -- more than any other stranger whose name he’s taken since arriving here in this world he only knows is not a land where the living dwell -- stands out to him for some inexplicable reason.

So he pushes to his feet, and there’s really no question as to how he’s going to respond to that offer. ] Mmhmm.

[ ...What, was Kija expecting something more cordial? A “yes please”; or “thank you for offering”, perhaps? Well, he might get those things, in all honesty -- but only after Demyx stops incessantly yawning and rubbing his eyes, nearly stumbling over the now-creased lengths of his long black cloak as he ascends the stairs.

And gets some tea in him. Yes. Tea will help.

Normally, he’d be waving his hands in declination to such a gracious offer, shrinking and backpedaling, saying he’s “not comfortable with that kind of thing”. But in this instance, he earnestly feels he is. Being here, in this place he’s never seen and wouldn’t know from any other “house”, feels like coming home.

But, as stated, since he hasn’t been inside before and doesn’t know his way around, as soon as he’s beyond the threshold of the entryway Demyx’s blue-green eyes are scanning around while he stretches -- and, yes, checks his masterful hair. It’s a bit misshapen, he finds, and without use of brain-to-mouth filter, (because he really doesn’t have one, no surprise), he’s asking Kija for a way to remedy this. ]

Say, do you have a mirror in this place?

[ Just like he's lived here all his (after)life. ]

[Well, the young man is tired.

[It hardly seems right to insist the young man stand on ceremony. He is meant to be here with him - meant to be to the extent that Kija is wondering if he will need to provide him with night-wear or not - so the fact that he is yawning and bleary-eyed and stumbling through the doorstep without a word feels... well, normal, as normal as if it were he himself who was doing it. He is meant to be here, just as - as Kija is meant to be with Hiryuu, never mind that he is not.

[So it is, almost, a surprise to realize that the man is hesitating in the doorway, gazing about himself as he takes in his surroundings, because it hardly seems like something that he should have to do...]

Is something the matter?

[He's never been here before, Kija--

[Add to that the manner of his dress, the way that the young man's hair stands, as if that were just how it grew, practically on end. Maybe the house's low furniture and sliding screens, the wooden walls and exposed beams of the roof are as unfamiliar to him as almost everything outside of its doors is to Kija. He hopes that the man does not feel too uncomfortable in here. He hopes he was not expecting too much in the way of straight-backed chairs.]

A mirror?

[Or mirrors.]

I am afraid not. Or... or if there is I have yet to find it.

[Hadn't noticed its absence either, if truth be told. Oh, dear. This isn't going to be too pressing a problem, he hopes.]

[ Everywhere is new; nowhere is familiar. On that merit alone, of course Demyx is given pause to scan around. But unlike other locales in this strange place, this one isn’t alarming. (Perhaps that’s only because here, there’s no strange possessed float trying to run him down, but hey.)

Though it’s obvious he’s lost still, he’s less an outsider here than he has been elsewhere, somehow.

...Even if this place apparently doesn’t come complete with all the creature comforts of a “home” he can’t recall, but must have had before. (Right?) ]

No mirror? Aww, man...

[ He’s going to moan and gripe to himself about it, (aloud, naturally, because what is quiet with Demyx involved), but that’ll be the last of it. It’s not the end of the world. Worse comes to worst, he can use a spoon or something to check his reflection.

...Please, Kija, tell him you at least have those...

He can’t even say; he doesn’t know enough to. And yet, he can’t shake a feeling, something as close to familiarity as he’s had as of yet. So he pauses after his scanning around, settling a puzzled expression upon Kija’s face. ]

So, uh... this is gonna sound nuts, but... have I been here before?

I do not think so? I am not sure this place was here before I was.

[Which, honestly, sounds almost as strange as the question does--

[Which is what has him stop short.

[He takes another look at Demyx, and oh, it's starting to make a horrible kind of sense, isn't it? Here is a stranger (and he is a stranger: Kija is absolutely sure he would remember someone with hair like that) all but presenting himself to him, like a candidate for office, or... or a servant. Yes, exactly like a servant, waiting at his master's door, and seemingly knowing nothing except that he is meant to be here, do with me what you will.

[It is all starting to add up. Except Kija isn't sure he cares for the answer - he has never asked anyone to fight for him, never even dreamed of it! - so what else is there to do but check again?]

Do you mind if I ask you a question?

[Because... well, what if he isn't?]

Quite how much do you recall?

Edited 2017-02-22 02:13 (UTC)

[ Hopefully it’s starting to click into all the right spots for Kija, because Demyx is still a little bewildered and uncertain, himself. ]

Before getting here? [ He shrugs weakly. ] Basically nada. After getting here? Uh... some stuff, but not a lot.

[ Though that’s partly because he’s a shinki, and partly because, well, Demyx. Nevertheless, at the query he still searches his person for a notecard, scratch pad, anything of the like, but comes up empty-handed.

Then scratching his cheek in thought, he looks distant for a moment, contemplative. ]

I know I’m dead.

[ Said so very casually, like it’s no big deal at all. But of course, he doesn’t know that he hadn’t wanted to die; that he’d shed tears for the first time about that as he’d slowly suffocated under the weight of his own frozen water magic while Sora and the others looked on.

...And he definitely doesn’t know that he’s on good terms with his own killer here, due to this ignorance of his. ]

Someone told me I needed to find my god, so I started to look but... then I got sleepy.

[ And, well, the rest is history, as they say. ]

Then you are a shinki?

[Yes, Kija: yes, he is--

[You can probably work out the rest from that.

[And that is rather troublesome, is it not? Because - well, he had not much cared to think on the inevitability of that. There is a distinct difference between a servant and a shinki, the one being a lot more akin to what the Four Dragons were to the Princess than to someone who... oh, swept the floors, maybe. Did the laundry. Cooked. Having someone to do the cooking - well, that was no trouble at all; it was even rather pleasant. Having someone around to whom he was what the Princess was to him--

[It troubles him.]

I think--

[He breaks off. Why is there absolutely no good way to voice what it is he is feeling? Yes, I am a God-- it is ridiculous. And far, far above his station. Yes, he is Hakuryuu, but then so was his father. They were, when it came down to it, still men; they could bleed, they could be incapacitated or killed. They were fallible.]

Well. This may sound odd, but... do you feel as if you should be here? I - well, there is definitely something of that sort, for me.

[It might not be emphatic enough, not after the way that blood calls to blood--

[But it's there. It is definitely there. And that is worrying, too.]

Yep!

[ That he can affirm with full confidence, even if half the time he’s asked he mangles the word, or forgets it entirely. It’s still familiar enough by now that when he hears it, he knows. And, along that very same vein, this place has a note of the same -- it’s faint, but there’s something inside him telling him he’s home.

...In a place he’s never been. With a stranger.

The facts and feelings conflict; thankfully, Demyx has never been as big on the former as he is the latter, though mainly in terms of himself and what he’d like to do, selfish creature as he inherently is. Even with his memories -- and his life, really -- gone, that perhaps undesirable trait still lives on, unimpeded.

Blue-green eyes glance around at unfamiliar walls, floors he’s never set foot upon. If he were to be asked to draw a blueprint of this place -- or to even describe its most basic interior facets -- he’d be clueless. He’d get it all wrong. And yet... ]

It’s like, I’m not as lost here as everywhere else. [ That’s the truth of it. Down to brass tacks, so to speak. ] So... yeah, I guess I kinda do.

[ With that, he tilts his head curiously at Kija, his expression innocent, but still questioning. ]

Are you sure we don’t know each other?

[ The people he’s met here, actual re-meetings of those he’s known before, haven’t smacked of this type of niggling little thing in the back of his mind he just can’t seem to ignore. ]

I am afraid we do not.

[Yet, something in him feels the need to add.

[Oh, why has he not started on - on making tea, or something? If only he had something to do with his hands. Except that would not help matters either, all that would be good for is delaying things, though he isn't quite sure what he is delaying: nobody ever knows quite what it is to achieve a task, if that task has been only described to them.

[So: he knows, does he not, what needs to be done now? Had discussed it, even, in the confident way that men discuss the theoretical. Maybe he is not looking forward to it, but - well, it is probably good for them both, or something of that nature, and in that case it hardly matters whether or not he wants to do it, wants that responsibility, would ever have dreamed of asking someone else to fight for him. He is, absurd and impertinent as it sounds, a God - for now, at least. And, here at least, a God is nothing without a shinki.

[And yet--

[There was something else; something about how wrong it would be, to bestow a name on - on another man's servant. He has to be sure.]

You say you were looking for your God. Did you happen to find them, or - or are you still searching?

[ They don’t know each other. Demyx has heard that a thousand times over by now, from every other face he’s opted to speak to -- all strangers, to him. When they say that, he’s inclined to believe them, (and that has nothing to do with his inherent gullibility). Yet, in this one instance, it doesn’t seem quite... accurate, perhaps. There’s a distant familiarity; or maybe just something that separates Kija from the rest of this world, somehow or another. Either way, it’s there.

To the question, Demyx shakes his head. ] Nuh-uh. No idea where to find ‘em. [ A small shrug accompanies.

Kairi had shooed him off to search, so he had; but his efforts have proved thus far fruitless. It’s disappointing. He doesn’t want to keep searching. But there’s something in his head, isn’t there? A little internal prompt of sorts that tells him he should stop searching now; though he’s not sure whether that’s his inherent laziness talking, or something else.

Regardless, he’s nearly, strangely on the cusp of asking if he can stay -- just for a short while -- but instead pauses, letting an awkward silence settle in between them. ]

Then your search may very well be over.

[And that would appear to be that.

[Which means-- oh, lord, where did he put the book? Never mind knowing what to do when the time is right: that had seemed alarmingly like working it out as he went along and... very well, he was not unfamiliar with that but this was different, it was important, it was God Business. If Kija knows anything about God Business (and, brought up surrounded by it, steeped in it, he understands it with a total intimacy that surpassed any worldly knowledge he might possess) it is this: you have to do it right.

[So, when he'd heard that the process of... well, of whatever one called it when they took a shinki (words like binding and summoning and - and a lot of other uncomfortably masterful words, for one born to serve) required some kind of incantation, he had of course written it down, and then written it down again. Something like this warranted being kept in a proper book, not a mere slip of paper tucked behind a vase.]

Excuse me a minute...

[The one problem is he cannot remember where he left the wretched--there.

[He snatches at it. Flips it open. Skim-reads the incantation again; once again, it really doesn't seem like very much, or at all like something he should be doing. The catch? Something about names. He frowns. Looks up from the book. Yes, he really is standing in front of a total stranger with hair that goes up, with a look of total concentration on his face and an open book in one hand. And why not hesitate? Renaming someone he has known for a few minutes, about whom he knows nothing save that he is in need of a mirror, without so much as consulting him first seems somehow impolite.]

I believe we must settle on a name. Is there anything you particularly wish to be called?

Edited 2017-03-19 00:59 (UTC)

[ Demyx’s face brightens markedly, eyes widening, blinking in rapid succession. Is it over? Is this man -- this not?stranger -- his god?

It sure feels like it, if anything ever has. And he’s encountered enough gods by now to know that this one feels different than the others. Roxas and Sora, Riku and the others... they didn’t have even the barest hint of familiarity to them. Though they were uncommonly kind to him, they were still strangers. Good Samaritans, perhaps? Whatever. The overarching point is, this place feels like somewhere he’s been before and somewhere he needs to stay; and this man, more like a friend than passerby of pure happenstance.

So he watches Kija as he excuses himself, seeing him return with a book. There’s more blinking as his head shakes at that question. ]

Mm-mm.

[ So long as he’ll still be Demyx, he means. And he will. Though he’s by nature a timid soul whose inner steel, resolve, and prowess are safely, neatly buried and tremendously hard to evoke from beneath all his more-prevalent laziness and cowardice, he feels no fear. This is right. ]

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[closed] I'm A What?

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sorry this took so long! been sick. :c

LIKEWISE.

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let me know if any of this doesn't compute... i was v tired.

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