Zeno (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eternalshield) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thenearshore2017-03-07 09:11 pm
eternalshield) wrote in thenearshore2017-03-07 09:11 pm
[closed] in a material world
Who: Zeno, Ouka, later Kija
What: "Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead," unless the dead one is Ouka.
When: 6-23
Where: Far/Near Shore... around...
Warnings: Nothing yet...
Zeno can be a little excessive.
Giving Kaya the sundress provoked such a reaction in her... It was a little overwhelming for them both. Zeno didn't want to-- it wasn't really upsetting to her (he hoped), but he wanted her getting nice things to be the norm, not the exception. She'd carved her living out of the dirt for eighteen years and she deserved to have her stay in heaven be, well, heavenly.
So he decided that gifts would now be regular, but instead of a whole mess of flowers and snacks and clothes, maybe just one thing.
Though clothes were a priority on that list. And the selection was amazing!
So many colors had to mean so many expensive dyes, but little girls like Ouka were unfazed by them. There were woven designs, embroidered designs, even printed designs in more colors than Zeno could easily count. And different shapes and sizes and all ready-made.
"There's so many of this one!" He held up a sky-blue shirt with criss-cross patterns woven across the front. "Do people ever walk into a place and realize someone is wearing the exact same clothes they are? Wouldn't that be funny?"
What: "Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead," unless the dead one is Ouka.
When: 6-23
Where: Far/Near Shore... around...
Warnings: Nothing yet...
Zeno can be a little excessive.
Giving Kaya the sundress provoked such a reaction in her... It was a little overwhelming for them both. Zeno didn't want to-- it wasn't really upsetting to her (he hoped), but he wanted her getting nice things to be the norm, not the exception. She'd carved her living out of the dirt for eighteen years and she deserved to have her stay in heaven be, well, heavenly.
So he decided that gifts would now be regular, but instead of a whole mess of flowers and snacks and clothes, maybe just one thing.
Though clothes were a priority on that list. And the selection was amazing!
So many colors had to mean so many expensive dyes, but little girls like Ouka were unfazed by them. There were woven designs, embroidered designs, even printed designs in more colors than Zeno could easily count. And different shapes and sizes and all ready-made.
"There's so many of this one!" He held up a sky-blue shirt with criss-cross patterns woven across the front. "Do people ever walk into a place and realize someone is wearing the exact same clothes they are? Wouldn't that be funny?"
no subject
Ouka already had a huge pile of clothes -- mostly cute dresses -- draped over her arm when she rounded the corner and caught Zeno's question. He always seemed to have such a strange thought process; it was hard to keep in mind that he was older than her sometimes.
"I don't think I've ever had that happen to me," she answered with a small giggle. Though, thinking on it, she's not sure she'd find it funny if someone wore the same outfit as her unintentionally. It'd likely be more mortifying than hilarious.
"Maybe we could find a dress maker, and we can have a dress made specially for Kaya." Excessive, Zeno? Ouka can be excessive too.
no subject
Kija is just lost.
Not properly lost. Not the kind of lost that sees one wandering hopelessly by the track of a stream, hoping to find a village or a farm or even just another wanderer before things got - complicated. Lost enough, maybe: the kind where, should he become thirsty or footsore, he could simply give up and go home.
He has been informed that here and now - wherever here or now may be - people Do Not Dress Like That. He is also uncomfortably aware that, since arriving in this place, he no longer has anything much to change into. Night-wear has not been a problem: strange though this place may be, it is at least not so completely bizarre that there is no way to obtain a simple robe even if it does take some finding. The rest of it... well, he is becoming uncomfortably aware that there is simply nothing for it but to throw up his hands and start dressing like a weirdo.
This does not mean he has any idea how to do that, or even what it is he should be looking for. He knows enough to know that he should be looking not for a tailor but in one of the colossal overcrowded storage houses that these people have instead of proper shops, and that he is required to know what size he is in proportion to everybody else (he does not).
What he is not so clear on is what he should actually be looking for.
Which is why, out of all the places he could be, he is stood a few feet away from Ouka and Zeno staring in absolute incomprehension at a rack of identical something-or-others, wondering how anyone ever managed to find anything to wear at all. With a dictionary.
He is far too busy concentrating on that (zipper noun zip·per \ˈzi-pər\: a fastener consisting of two rows of metal or plastic teeth on strips of tape and a sliding piece that closes an opening by drawing the teeth together... Thank you, that explains everything except no, it absolutely does not and anyway, who thought that was a good idea?) when a voice - familiar, too - mentions dressmakers, and he looks up.
"Do they still have those, here?"
And do they make clothes without - excuse me - zippers?
no subject
Even if these clothes are... all the same... varying only slightly in size. "Even if they don't... tailor them, they must still be made by dressmakers, right? Very skilled ones." He drops the blue shirt rather unceremoniously where Kija should probably catch it if it isn't going to end up on the floor. "Look at how tiny and even the stitches are!"
He reaches for some of the things on Ouka's arms. "One. Zeno must narrow it down to one for Kaya. Something summery."
Even as he says it, he pulls a fine linen shirt off the rack and drops it similarly into Kija's periphery. Careful! It's white!
"Try this on." He's multitasking, holding up a rather flowery dress to himself and trying to gauge its size relative to Kaya. "Who determines these number sizes?"
no subject
"But sometimes it's hard to make sure everything fits perfectly, since everyone's bodies are different. So a dressmaker could take your measurements and make one perfectly tailored to you!" She pauses for a moment to hold up a dress for examination. It occurs to her that she doesn't know that much about Kaya.
"Say, Zeno... what's she like? What kind of stuff did she like wearing back... you know, home?"
no subject
"But that is how it works at home. You go to a dressmaker. Why do your rulers make their people wear clothes that don't fit properly?"
He peers suspiciously at the clothes Zeno seems intent on garlanding him with, though to what end - are these not women's things? - he cannot imagine, and discovers a mysterious white tab covered in numbers and drawings of shapes and boxes: 40 buckets, do not triangle. Is this shirt (and it would be a nice shirt, if it were not so determinedly baffling) trying to communicate and, if it is, why in the world won't it speak his language? How a system like this was ever allowed to evolve is absolutely beyond him.
If only he knew how to get rid of it. Kija looks about himself for... well, he is not quite sure for what. For this shirt's identical twins and triplets, apparently but, surrounded by sundresses, he cannot see anything that looks even remotely like it. Just lots and lots of the same things, gibbeted.
"These all look the same. How does anyone know what their number is?"
no subject
He slips a few more vaguely-Kija-shaped things off a rack -- in greens, blues, and yellows, just for fun -- and continues to festoon his dear little brother in unpaid for finery.
"Try them all on!" he commands, before answering Ouka.
"You saw how she dresses," he says, non-committal. Kaya was a poor, sick country girl who probably made her own clothes and didn't have many goods to make them from. One of the reasons he was so intent on giving her clothes was so she wasn't stuck in the kimono that had been her work clothes, bed clothes, wedding clothes, and death shroud.
no subject
"And it's to make things easier. Things are pre-made so you can get something now instead of having to wait for something made. Duh!" This time, it wasn't as easy to force back. Oops.
But the focus of this trip is more on Kaya. And Kija, you're ruining that. Ouka isn't quite satisfied with Zeno's answer though. She's only seen Kaya twice, and hadn't exactly been paying attention to what she was wearing.
"Yeah, but... what does she like? What are her hobbies You know, is she more into dresses, or is she more of a jeans and t-shirt type of girl?" Unless Zeno doesn't know? But, he must know... "She's your wife, isn't she? What was it like living with her?"
no subject
And there goes absolutely everything Zeno just handed him.
Kija doesn't care. He quite simply does not care that he is standing in the middle of a ridiculous warehouse of nonsensical garments, in the middle of a small puddle of same. He is too busy staring at - well, he isn't quite sure who he should be staring at. Ouka is the one who is talking, but Zeno would seem to be by far the most logical candidate when was he planning on telling me any of this Zeno next time I ask you how to keep any kind of a secret please for the love of all that is good and sacred in either of these two worlds TELL ME.
Yes, okay: the wife part is not news. It is deeply, deeply disturbing and troubling in what it implies, but it is not actually news.
That his wife is Kaya, that she is here--
"Does she know of this?!" No, of course she cannot know that, Kaya has not been left anything but the simple fact of her own name. "But... does that not mean you are married again?"
Is that how this works? He turns to Ouka.
"His wife is Kaya?"
Why am I always the last one to know such things?
1/2
2/2
He folds the abused fabric as he fabricates an answer in his head. He isn't, exactly, bothered by people knowing. The knowing, that isn't the thing. Nothing changes whether or not people know. It doesn't change his feelings, it certainly doesn't change the past, and he sincerely doubts its effects on the future as well.
"Zeno is sure Hakuryuu made a good impression on his sister," he says brightly, mostly to subtly clue Ouka in on why this is so significant to Kija. Secondary goal is to get Kija to calm down.
The immediate flaws in that plan are the words 'subtle' and 'calm,' Zeno is aware, but nothing ventured, nothing gained...
"Poor Kaya, though. It's not really fair that everyone knows such a private thing about her, when she must never know it herself."
A warning sneaks into that sentence, Zeno's voice gradually becoming firmer, sterner, on each word.
Because it isn't fair. That is Zeno's main concern. There's a particular assumption you can make about married people and it's not really something young girls should have assumed about them. It feels like a complete invasion of Kaya's privacy to give that impression, so he has tried to avoid it. He couldn't deny her specter during that... parade... not when he was going to destroy her, anyway. He owed her that.
But he owes her this, too. This odd ghost of a second chance. She has a chance at a rea... sonable facsimile of a life, without sickness, with mobility and society and comforts and what a terrible, terrible thing it would be, to have some old man who by all rights ought to have been dead before she was even old enough to get married, hold her back?