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aw, halifax. for someone I've never RP'd with before, plz. :o
Another day, another bookstore. He had decided that he liked the quaint and tiny corner bookstores better than the larger chains and libraries. He had never been particularly claustrophobic, and the cramped space felt more comfortable somehow, more personal, more friendly. It made him feel more secure that he knew what was in his immediate surroundings, and that there was usually just one or two entrances. These places, for the most part, always smelt the same. The scent of dust and aged leather and yellowed pages that had not seen light in many long years. Though the curiosity of his youth remained, for the most part, in his youth, Laruku found himself reading more in the last several weeks than he had in the last two years combined. He had forgotten about the comforts of fantasy worlds hidden between covers, and he had forgotten about the beauty of the words, of the voices.
Today though, the hybrid found himself sitting on the floor against a wall with a few dozen music books sprawled out on the aged carpet around him. They ranged from very easy to very difficult in skill level and the genres spanned further, from his favorites in the classicals to things he could not remember having ever seen before. He was not so skilled at being able to hear the notes in his head as he read them, but he missed the piano for the first time in years. The early afternoon sunlight poured through the dust-caked window at the front of the small store and birds called loudly to each other just outside. But Laruku wasn't really there with them; he was somewhere else, a place that couldn't even be described with the most graceful of words.
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I think Laurel counts... but this post is just plain retarded, blah.
[html] He hadn't left the city since he had met up with Poe but instead had set off to explore it a little bit better. Given that he intended to stick around for some unknown amount of time (at least until the itchy foot struck again, he believed), it probably wouldn't have hurt to gain a more intimate study of what the city had to offer. Laurel didn't doubt that they would be frequenting its crumbling buildings for things because it would still be a while before they were self-sufficent enough to do without wandering too far. The idea of being fixed some thirty-five or forty miles away from it didn't bother him any, he was well travelled enough to make good time no matter where he went.
So onward down the cracked pavement he roamed, olive-coloured eyes scanning the more squat buildings that rested against the backdrop of curving suburbs and lied before the sprawling downtown district. It must have been something, he thought, to have seen some holy hand take the top specie and wipe them clear off of the chess board. Cars strewn about, occasionally on sidewalks, rolled over and burnt to nothing more than the (now) rusty shells that they began as. But the smells of the city seemed to still remain one form or another, so it had never been very hard for him to pick out the various visitors to the area. From wolves to coyotes to stray dogs and cats, there was probably even a stray crocodile in the sewers, his nose picked through it all without a second thought.
Which had gotten him in trouble a time or two before, because for the same reason they could pick out one smell from another, they could ignore it as well. Another grime-caked window didn't mean too much to him as he approached it, unaware of another just inside, and promptly wiped it with his hand to peer inside. It was the grime on the inside that didn't let him do anything about really seeing in, so he went in, mindlessly flinging the door open and sending the dust flying every which way (to his dismay). Sneezing as soon as those doors were open had become his little accidental theme, as was either stumbling across folks or getting stumbled across himself. It was the sheets of music on the floor that caught his attention first, then the mustard-coloured hybrid who was reading over them.
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He sneezed as well, and the page he had been holding flew out of his hand. He was used to the dust, but it wasn't really one of those things that you could build complete a immunity against. The canine that had so unceremoniously entered the tiny store did not seem to be a typical member of the motley crew that was scattered about the valley. Laruku knew there were many canines that had adopted much more "advanced" and humanistic lifestyles, especially those on the other side of the ocean, but though there were many things about the dead culture that he appreciated, he had never been too compelled to emulate them so closely. All the same, it was probably only circumstantial that he had not met too many of those that did, especially as many seemed to revert back to a more feral way of living when they happened upon the natives here. He suspected that Ahren and many of his family were among those ranks.
A large ear flicked forward and he blinked a moment at the stranger before looking down again, wondering where his missing page had gone. Musician? he echoed, voice much smoother than it had been in months past. Once upon a time, I suppose. He leaned forward and retrieved the stray yellowed page from across the floor, Life got in the way. But life seemed to have retreated back under some kind of rock, and nowadays, he had a lot of time to himself with no particular duties or obligations. It was a strange kind of retirement, but he was slowly getting to enjoy it. Red eyes looked back up at the stranger as he placed the page back between its fellows. And yourself?
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[html] Life had a thing about getting in the way and it did it a lot. It was something that they had all experienced before and would no doubt experience until the day when death got in the way. Then he simply didn't know if they went over a bridge, to some place in the sky, or into a bleak world of nothingness and endless sleep. For the same reasons, he didn't think about it either, knowing that what would happen would simply happen. “I'm a musician, still. Not much more or less than that,” he answered, finding the other musician's red eyes to be quite an interesting sight. The second face in the city he had found with them, in fact.
Knowing his luck, they probably wouldn't be the last pair of red eyes he would see while he was around. But that aside, he ventured a little bit further into the building, eyeing the shelves, and trying not to let the conversation drop in such a manner that was rude. “Didn't mean to blow your music all over the place though, guess I shouldn't swing doors open so far. Stirs up the dust and it's not very friendly to anyone,” to which he laughed slightly. “But I'm Laurel. Which instrument do… or did you play?” His was obvious—the banjo—and looked just as queer as the clothed coyote's name (and appearance) was. Still, there were very few places that he didn't carry it with him and this wasn't out of the exception. [/html]
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He found himself with a small smile as the other laughed. Indeed, was his voice of agreement, But was there a reason you were just so excited to come into this tiny, little bookstore that you had to slam the door open? Though he convinced himself that he wasn't particularly bothered or fascinated by those that have adopted more humanized ways, Laruku seemed to be staring down the stranger anyway and thinking of all the reasons why the way he dressed was inherently impractical. A jacket or vest might provide pockets, but so did a bag, and that seemed so much more convenient. It was the same with pants. A hat was passable -- it blocked the sun, and the banjo was a tool of its own merit. He just didn't particularly understand clothing, but shrugged mentally. Whatever floated people's boats.
Laruku, he introduced similarly. Piano, and I sang. Sitting knee-deep in pages of little black notes, he could only miss the ivory keys, but he had yet to explore this city thoroughly enough to know where any of the instruments were, much less any that were still operational. Size made the piano the most inconvenient thing to bother learning (perhaps he shouldn't be too hard on the clothing-wearing folk then), but he had loved it all the same. In any case, his other instrument -- his voice -- was the exactly opposite. It was the most convenient, the easiest to carry around with him, and the most natural for their kind. Long before humans had even begun to scratch the surface of music, they had been howling at the stars and the sky.
You any good? he asked, nodding towards the other. It was an innocent enough question, though Laruku already suspected that he had to be. After all, he had declared himself a musician by profession.
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So tonight I might be able to catch up on CG for the first time in two weeks, lol. x_x;
[html] “Oh no, not really. Stores are kind of exciting in their own ways though,” came a slightly sheepish response. In truth, he threw doors open far too much like that just because he could. Sometimes it gave whoever was inside a scare and other times down his sordid past it had gotten him chased out directly thereafter. “And sometimes habits are hard to break… I've had a lot of doors that were stuck shut.” Or locked, or otherwise not supposed to be entered but hey, free stuff inside. Couldn't pass that up, depending on the objects inside anyway. Books were fairly interesting anyway in their own right, though he didn't spend very much time reading.
But back to the reality of things, Laurel couldn't help but make a slight “mmm” before commenting on what Laruku was saying. “I haven't heard a piano in a long time, but I've spent a lot of time on the road. Not too many players out there but the ones who can play are very good,” and he didn't doubt that this guy was either. “As for me… I guess you could say that. I can play better than someone just fooling around on it, obviously, but only because I've been at it almost five years now. I don't really think I'm any good at singing but I do that anyway too.” And it was often, far too often. He turned his full attention back to the hybrid then and continued the conversation with a faint smile.
“There's a small troupe of us outside of the city, though I can't really say much for the others that have settled for the time being with us, but a friend of mine is a cellist, but we came from another place that was pretty much on the music stuff.” Laurel had yet to find anyone who didn't appreciate music, whether it was played out on an instrument or vocal, though it no doubt stemmed from something much more feral in them. “So what's your favourite piece on the piano? I don't know really know very much about playing it but I know a song or two by ear.” Even if they were children's songs. [/html]
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Though he had dedicated a substantial amount of time to it as a yearling, Laruku had never considered himself particularly good out it, though it was hard to say whether or not this was just innate self-criticism. He had good rhythm, but his fingers were clumsy. It took time for him to adjust to different keys, it was hard for him to play a lot of chords in a row, and it often took a page or two before he got really "into" any particular song. And he had never been able to concentrate well enough to manage playing and singing simultaneously, though oddly, though he liked singing, he rarely played music that had accompanying lyrics. Pianos are hard to cart around, he said with the same small smile, I haven't looked around this city much either -- there are probably some around, but I don't know where yet.
At the mention of a cellist, the hybrid was reminded briefly of a one-time encounter with what seemed to have been a half-dozen random musicians back on the other side of the mountain. Though he couldn't really remember, he didn't think that they had actually ever played anything together. It had been too chaotic and impromptu of a gathering; they hadn't known each other, and no one was prepared. I don't know very many other musicians, but it might just be because I don't ask. At the very least, he figured most people would sing in one way or another, for one reason or another.
He had been told before that he had a pretty voice, but though he would do it anyway if prompted, Laruku didn't much like the idea of singing in front of others. It always seemed to be a coincidence that anyone heard his singing voice at all. I liked classical music a lot and Christmas music, he said, Pachelbel's Canon in D is a favorite. He wondered if he still had it memorized. He wondered if his fingers remembered. What kind of music is played on a banjo?
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[html] “Folk music, mostly,” he said partially out of the fact that most of what he knew was folk music. “But you could play just about anything on it if you wanted to. I don't or really, I can't read sheet music but I know the sounds that the notes make well enough to figure out how most things are played.” And simply to demonstrate the sound of his instrument, he ran his thumb against the strings once and let it resonate between them. Some days he hated to admit that he had never grasped understanding what dots on lines meant, other days it didn't really matter to him. He liked to play, simple as that. When others enjoyed it though, Laurel enjoyed it the most. Unlike most music played on a piano, the music he played did have lyrics and in some sense made me was some sort of modern day bard with the way that they told stories.
“I can't really remember where I saw a piano at last… I'm not even sure it was in tune, but I want to say it was in a bar somewhere. Really fancy one, like one of those saloons you find way the hell out in the southwest where the deserts are,” and now he was talking like Laruku had been there himself. “Had a little stage and everything, I think.” Maybe it was a banquet hall, now that he thought about it. Either way, it was a bit hazy in itself, though it may have only been a week or two since he had seen it in passing. “If I ever come across it again, maybe I'll have to track you down and show you it.” He thought maybe it would be nice to give the pianist back his keys, anyway. Probably would beat sitting on a dusty floor reading things, right? [/html]
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Laruku could be called a classicist, a romantic, a illusioned dreamer with one limb in reality and three hanging elsewhere. He was secretly introverted, but circumstance had outed him to the public, put him on a decrepit throne, and given him a tarnished crown. He had thus learned how to be a political figure; he had faked the confidence and poise and formality, and he had carried that title for so long that now freed, he wasn't really sure if he just wanted to hide from people or not. It was, after all, very lonely to be alone, even when contemplation gave him all the conversation he never really wanted. He liked the music he could make, and he could be entranced by others' music, but that didn't mean that he knew how to react to it.
Still, he retained his smile, and nodded at Laurel's brief demonstration and continued explanation, his narrative. I've never really traveled, the hybrid admitted, Was born on the other side of this mountain and probably would have died there if the fire hadn't come. The half-childhood he had been forced to spend away from home didn't seem to count for much anymore. In the end, it didn't really seem like Acid had led him very far -- just far enough that a three month old would spend the next eight months trying to find his way back. And it didn't seem to matter either that he would have died there because of the fire, had others not intervened. The floor isn't so bad, he added, If it isn't music, it will just be books. Escapism at its best.
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[html] And there it was again, the talk of that fire that had gone on over the mountains. Laurel had never ventured that far before (in fact, he had never even been to Halifax until just a few days ago) and part of him was curious as to just what it looked like on the other side. Or what it had looked like, anyway. It seemed like anyone who had come from there was a little roughed up, present company included. “I've been gone long enough from where I was born that I'm not really sure I remember where it is,” he mentioned with a shake of his head and a chuckle, not sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
“I've met a few folks that were involved in that fire on the other side of the mountain though. One girl said she lost her sister in the fire but found her kid here,” to which he assumed she was now raising said kid. He hadn't dabbled too long on the conversation with Naniko, unfortunately. “It's too bad something like that tore the roots out of your home, especially if you've lived there all of your life.” Not that he would know, of course, but Laurel though he had enough empathy on his face to figuring out the emotions attached to it. [/html]
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Well, there has to be something good about always traveling, right? No permanent connections, no heavy obligations, no reason to turn back because there was always going forward. Or something. Laruku could only recite what he'd been told or what he'd read. In that case, it really didn't matter what Laurel told him of why he was the nomad that he apparently was, because Laruku would never really, really understand it, even if he thought he did. Then again, if asked why he himself simply didn't try it out, he wouldn't be able to give a proper answer. Wanderlust had just never gotten a hold of him like it had everyone else.
Most people living in this area now came from the other side of the mountain, I think, he told the other, Strangely enough, this place seemed pretty deserted before we got here. It was hard enough to not run into family, much less anyone that hadn't come from the fire-consumed lands. The banjo player seemed to be a strange exception. Maybe I ought to travel more.
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Blah, sorry about the lame shortness of this. :| *creativity fail*
[html] “Oh yeah, there's some good to it. The freedom, first and foremost. No matter where you go, you always run into someone new, someone with a different story. Good people, bad people,” same kind of people he had already met there. Wanderlust had been the story of his life; he had never felt a need to settle down for very long amounts of time at all, but maybe that was about to change. “You should give it a shot sometime, you might like it. Most of the area up around here is sparsely populated from the looks of it anyway, things are really toiling out to the west and south though.” Places where wolves and coyotes had been on reserves and zoos, left alone long enough and they had populated. Everyone had taken advantage of everything. Which was how they inheritantly got to where they were, more or less.
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There is only creativity fail when you start quoting Fight Club. D;
A cynic's sneer floated in from the back of his mind at Laurel's answer. He found the concept of "someone new" subject to debate. Most people were very much the same when stripped apart and analyzed. They either had a good childhood or a more difficult one, but whatever paths they chose seemed limited to a half dozen or so, and in the end, they would become one of just a handful of personalities. A humble wanderer, an arrogant prince, an ambitious hero, a contemptuous villain, a fallen angel or broken soul. They were storybook archetypes, but he would be hard-pressed to think of anyone he knew that didn't fit one of them. Even when people seemed to fit in multiple categories, the variation didn't seem to be that great. Different story? Just the details of it. A different name, a different birthplace, a different pair of parents. Same decaying flesh as everyone else.
He only nodded though. If anything, "freedom" was something he could appreciate. It must be good to not be tied down to one place, one people. Maybe someday, he said of traveling, though he wasn't really sure if he meant it. It was easy to stay where he was; it always had been, even when he'd hated it. He didn't fantasize about running away anymore, even if it wouldn't be called such now. It was beautiful, I suppose, though this place isn't all that different. In fact, everything was startlingly similar. The new packs' names were different, and maybe he didn't know all that much about them, but their presences were nearly the same as they had always been. Inferni was still making war. Wolves were still waging it back. Nothing had changed. My pack was supposed to have been cursed. Near the end, it seems like that curse had spread to the entire valley. 'Seems like it's still around sometimes. Or all the time, but he didn't go out enough to really know.
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But it is worth quoting! *rambles aimlessly*
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The world was a beautiful place even beneath all of its death and decay. Life pulsed and thrived all around them whether or not they realised it, the ground beneath their feet was littered with the bones of things long gone, things that had returned to the very place that they had sprang forth from. All of it could be gone in a blink of an eye, an ill-placed step along the road, even the downfalls of evolution or religion, which ever one found itself applicable to the moment. It was far too easy to get tired of life, far too easy to take it for granted; maybe that was why he had gone through life just existing and taking it one step at a time. He had long stopped thinking about what it was that he was doing and avoided routine.
“A curse,” he said with just an edge of doubt. “I've heard a great deal about those before. Some say we'll see the end of the world soon, whether it's in a great fire or freeze. I just think it's the way things go, curses are probably just excuses for things others just don't want to accept. What kind of curse did they say about you?” Better yet, what were the things that they had said about him? He had even forgotten the things that he had heard from the lips of those who he was flesh and blood of and for the same reason, had forgotten where he had come from. It took time, it took a lot of time, but there had been things to help ease that wait. In a broad spectrum, they really were all the same, but in sporadic doses he found that they were all very interesting and different in their own way.
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He wasn't really sure he had ever believed in the curse; it had felt rather like a self-fulfilling prophecy at times. unfortunate as it was, the hybrid still believed that his predecessor's death had been a suicide. He was surprised to find himself recalling Maluki's concern on the matter after he'd inherited the alphaship; oh, his make-believe brother in an unfair world -- he wondered where he was now? Far removed from this place, or more likely, long dead. There was beauty in everything, even the decay, or rather, especially the decay. Theirs was a fascinating decadence, and all of the coping mechanisms they created for themselves to keep living, even when they didn't really want to. It was a love-hate thing.
Certainly, he agreed with the nature of curses, We like to believe in apocalypses so we don't have to try as hard. When the world ended, everything would be irrelevant, so what was the point in trying to change the world? I was supposed to die a violent death was all, he answered simply, V'come close, but it hasn't happened yet. Of course, this was due entirely to the intervention of others, but for the while, he preferred to keep the conversation at arm's length. His scars and his details didn't matter, and his past was just a whisper in the wind. What sorts of other curses have you come by?
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“I've heard and had a few old fools and young ones alike said that people like me walk a line of misfortune. Won't find food, won't find water, any shelter that's come across will either fall apart or reject you. Get killed, get struck by lightning on a cloudless day,” he huffed, half-laughing at the thought. “I saw an old man grab a girl and tell her that the ground whole swallow her whole if she left the area under a full moon.” And for all Laurel knew, she did anyway despite being a little freaked out. The world was full of crazies, some that could accurate tell the future and some that could read the past just by looking in their eyes.
“Most of it is just a bunch of talk. Any given day any of those things could happen. Fate, luck, whatever. If you can think of something bad or even “evil” to happen to someone, there's probably a curse for it.” Laurel of course, believed that things were dictated a little bit more by luck than anything else. It always depended upon the choices that they made, how decent their common sense was from one topic to another. He had managed to avoid some things one way or another, so if he walked some line of misfortune, it hadn't made itself apparent yet.
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Everyone walks a line of misfortune if you focus on the right things, Laruku said. Isolate the good from the bad and concentrate on one or the other; it was why any foretelling of a lifelong thing, whether positive or negative, could be found true. There were endless indicators and depending on the level of belief, even the smallest things could count for something. Still, as far-fetched as most curses were, the hybrid could understand the appeal very well, especially if the alternative was simply chaos. Fate and luck were as cruel as any curse, except that they did not so much victimize those they affected -- they laughed instead.
People liked order and predictability; if a curse could give them that, even if it was by dictating war and death and famine, then so be it. Oftentimes, that was better than believing in nothing. Laruku had been a nihilist before. People like knowing that not everything is their fault. Can't really blame them. Of course, sometimes it really was their fault.
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“That's true,” he said with a bob of his head. He liked the way that Laruku thought, partly because there was a comfort in knowing that someone feel the same way about some of the things that he had often not talked about. At least, it wasn't every day that he stood around talking about curses anyway. People did like knowing that not everything was their fault, it was always easier when it wasn't their fault. Blame it on the weather, on the circumstances, blame it on everyone but themselves. If they didn't think about it, they didn't consider the what ifs or just how they may or may not have attributed to everything.
No one wanted to believe they were living in a chaotic world, not matter the circumstances. The world was a big place and there were many places where things were just quiet and tame; surely for every one of those, there was one that mimicked Hell on earth. “Maybe being unable to fault ourselves is a curse too,” he mused. “Maybe it's what makes blaming something or someone else so appealing or logical, since we think about how it can't be our fault, because this happened! Or this! We've probably over-complicated everything.” Or maybe not, maybe it was really just that simple.
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There was the other extreme, too. Faulting yourself too much. As he did not believe in the curse himself, that was the alternative Laruku had been left with, and it was just as easy to take all the blame as it was to avoid it. Ideally, a person would be able to tell from an objective standpoint just who's fault it really was, but life had never been supposed to be free of bias. They were all, after all, subjective creatures all with their own perspectives. Whatever they believed at the end of the day was still a belief that only they could verify for themselves. Life provided no answers and came with no manual.
Calling it a curse is just reaffirming it, the hybrid said with a weary grin, It can be a curse to blame everything on yourself too, or even a curse to be able to tell who's fault it really is. He laughed. Somehow, he always seemed to end up talking about these sorts of things in dusty, old bookstores or creaking old stages. Maybe that was a curse too.
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Urgh, I can't stop yawning. ;_; *whines*
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On second thought, maybe they should have just done away with the word “curse” and just let it go at that. It was a word almost too applicable to everything, at least in their case. He nodded all the same though, letting his eyes roam thoughtfully around the store and over the various book covers and faded posters in cracked glass frames on the wall. “I wonder what got the humans,” he thought aloud, then lifting up a book that had a picture of one on the cover. “At least, since we're on the topic of curses, they must have screwed up or something with all of their crazy ideas.” In his book they had made a few good things—clothes, instruments, and booze for starters—but other than that he thought they were a little off the rocker when it came to other things. Religion, something called politics, things that didn't mean anything to him at all and made even less sense.
“At least they left behind good stuff, huh?”
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