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Vieira could not be more thankful that he did not say anything else about her well being. He seemed to become more focused on that of Kaena and that was all that mattered. She was unhappy that she was forced away from her owner when she was down and she could not do anything about it. Her dependent level was high when forced away and she felt lost out here, as if she were drowning in the ocean not far from where they were. If she was not making Kaena happy, then something was going to end awfully for her, and she could only stay back and out of the way for now if that is what the woman wanted.
His request seemed odd to her but she simply nodded. Her fingers crossed over her arm as she thought about and wondered if she would say anything. If she did, it would show that Vieira had spoken of something she should not have and she felt a sudden worry rise inside her. But if she did not say anything, and it came back to this male, it could be worse. Her jaw tightened reflexively and she decided she would find a different way to word things when she returned, whenever that was. "Yes, sir," she said softly and repeated his request in her head in order to find something that was casual and easy to pass along to her owner.
The woman stood back and found the broken snow below her and lowered her rump to the ground. She did not find that he would give permission to her but she was tired and needed to rest. The ground was cold but she did not complain. Instead, she relaxed a fraction and drew her legs up into an Indian fashion and lingered in his silent company.
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@&#&$It was no wonder he had such trouble relating to the woman; for all intents and purposes the two canines were exactly opposite. Even during his youth Anselm had always been fiercely independent and bursting at the seams with confidence. Clearly all children relied on their parents for protection and sustenance early on, but so far as emotional support or independence of thought were concerned, he'd never required validation from anyone. Although he would always adapt his way of thinking in the face of adequate (and sound) evidence, he stuck strongly to his own beliefs and convictions, whether they regarded the world at large or the personality of any given individual.
@&#&$Once he'd moved on from his birth pack his personality had only solidified further. By now, reliance on another would be a self-proclaimed failure; he'd proven he could survive the trying life of a loner several times over already, and the security the clan offered was only a luxury. That was why he continued his rigorous daily training--he just could not assume that things would stay as they were now forever. The blaze that consumed the land on the other side of the mountain before them was evidence enough of that.
@&#&$The formality of her words did not strike him as particularly odd; Snake had uttered the very same thing before they'd set off for Phoenix Valley together. He was also pleased when she chose to sit down and relax--now he wouldn't have to second guess as much whether or not she really wanted to be there with him talking. He figured that her admission of Kaena's troubles was a load off of her chest, and the lazy thumps of his tail showed his own relief.
@&#&$"So you really never played that game when you were a kid?" he wondered, peering at her curiously before turning his crimson gaze back to the blue sky above. "Trying to find shapes in the clouds, I mean," he added, since it had apparently been unclear the first time. His river-tree cloud was long gone, the edges already man-handled so roughly by the winds of the atmosphere that it was now but a hazy white blur. Plenty of others hung overhead, however, and he pointed at one particular cloud with his snout. "See that one? I think it looks like an eagle... that sharp hook is the beak, and those two blotches are the wings," he explained.
@&#&$Tilting his head to an almost comical degree, he squinted at it further. "Then again, if you look at it upside down, the beak could be the antenna of a butterfly with its wings upturned." There was no right or wrong answer in this game--half the point was trying to wrap your mind around the other person's perspective, even if it was not immediately obvious to you. He shrugged a little, deciding he wouldn't pressure her into picking out a shape if she did not want to. He knew some folks might feel put on the spot, but he was mostly hoping it'd help distract her from the troubles at home... or at least prove he was just going to babble on about nonsense unless she wanted to bring up something more relevant.
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The woman slowly shook her head to his question. "I did not play games," she said. Vieira had once seen children playing games in Eterne and had found out when asking Astaroth. Her father never let her out with the other children and when she came of age, she began to realize she was not like them, even at the same ages of they had been. Her eyes closed for a moment at this thought and her thin digits interlocked with one another quickly and tightened until her knuckled turned white beneath her golden fur. Vieira had not seen enough of what a real childhood was like in order to long for what she missed but she knew there was something inside her, a hole that had always been present and she had never been able to fill.
When he pointed out a cloud, she opened her golden eyes and stared upward to try and imagine what he was talking about. It took her longer than it should have to see the eagle he was pointing out. He then mentioned it was possibly a butterfly and she felt the weight of his expectation on her shoulders. She now had to figures to try and see and they began to mush together and she was unable to see them separately. Her head tilted to try and separate them but she was not able to form the image in her head in line with the clouds. "Yes," she said quietly, lying just to avoid further questions or interrogations she was not comfortable talking about but often times felt she did not have a choice.
Vieira blinked to get a clearer view and tried to forget the eagle and butterfly. Her golden eyes turned away to find something else, another cloud and tried to see something in it other than a cloud. Her jaw tightened and she unclasped her hands, spreading them out on her knees with patience. "That one looks like..." she trailed off, about to say a "wave" but thought that might be too easy. She lingered in silence and tried to think of something else and instead went with: "a flower." It was a little distorted but with the wind, it began to take on the appearance of a cartoon-like flower. Exaggerated petals with a long stem. Vieira glanced toward Anselm as if waiting for approval for what she found.
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@&#&$Anselm wondered what sort of environment would forbid the practise of play amongst children. Even amidst the never ending battle in the mountains he'd been encouraged to play with the other youths--at least up until a certain age, at which point things became more serious and combat specific training increased in both intensity and frequency, leaving less time for silly games. It was around that time his drug habits had started up, too, which was hardly coincidental even though he'd never given it much thought until just now. It simply seemed so critical to proper development that he couldn't help but boggle over her confession. Play taught puppies how to socialise and enabled them to establish stronger bonds with their peers. It helped their growing bodies to strengthen physically and some games promoted their sense of cunning. Still, as his earlier questioning had caused them both a fair level of distress, he could only wonder in silence. Maybe he'd talk to Kaena about it later--surely she had some insight into her roommate's strange behaviour?
@&#&$"Guess you've got some catching up to do then, eh?" he wondered simply, his tone gentle and inviting. In adulthood Anselm still enjoyed a good game with the proper company--none too surprising, perhaps, as regression was a recognised coping mechanism for stress (and perhaps by his bad genetics alone, his life destined to be filled with plenty). He only hoped it would work the same for her since here it was something new, not something comfortable and familiar. Fortunately, she seemed to have found her own vision in the sky; his gaze drifted to the cloud in question and he gave an enthusiastic nod, his tail flopping behind him twice. "Ah, yea, I see it!" he said, before poking his nose in the direction of the cloud immediately adjacent to the flower. "And that one looks a bee, coming to land on it!" he added, before frowning. "Well, maybe a really fat bee." A shrug; after all, they could hardly expect a perfect rendition of anything from real life.
@&#&$Now that their little "crisis" had passed, he found himself slouching into a lazier and lazier sit. He was no longer so intensely focused on Vieira's skittish and anxious mannerisms. Before much longer he was on the ground again, this time sprawled on his side more so than flipped on his back. "Ah, yea; here's another one: I spy. You look around, find some object or thing to look at, then tell the other person the colour. Then they try to guess what you originally saw. Like... 'I spy something white!' Then you could guess either the snow, a cloud, or something else! Sometimes it's tricky... see that piece of quartz over there? That could've been it, too," he said, gesturing toward the whitish rock tucked subtly away amongst the snow and dry grass. "You pick something," he suggested, figuring this way she'd feel less put on the spot. It was easier to find an object than to guess, he supposed.
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Vieira felt relieved when he was able to see what she pointed out even if what she suggested was distorted. After a moment, it began to look like a flower and she was thankful she had been able to find something so quickly. However, he changed it up when he pointed out a "bee" in the clouds and she tried to find it. She more or less saw a blob of a cloud that he was referring to but she did not see a bee. Instead, she just smiled and nodded only to please him despite her lack of vision on the cloud. Instead of focusing longer on that particular cloud and looked for another one to make into an animal or other shape. There was a short lingering silence between them and she was only looking from cloud to cloud with no real effort.
She was beginning to feel comfortable with this game when he shook it up and brought up another one. She hard a hard time focusing with the suddenness of the situation, her head jerking slightly to look in his direction. Her mind to not follow all of the instructions and when it was her chance to pick something, her jaw opened to object but she was not able to find her words. She stared at the snow flaked ground for a long moment in order to fill in the blanks she missed when trying to adjust to the new game and found she had a hard time coming up with something. Vieira did not prefer either game but she was easier with ones with clouds. It was taking time trying to come up with what they looked like but at least she had caught on relatively easy.
The slave tightened her jaw and she gripped the balls of her knees, her claws digging into the flesh until she shook her head. "I don't want to play," she finally admitted, her voice low and she closed her eyes in worry. She regretted objecting and her muscles tensed in reflex. She objected when she was younger, against both men, and that had not pleased them. "I-I'm sorry," she whispered and glanced in his direction, staring at his form on the ground. "I just do not understand," she said in a weak voice, quiet and evident that she did not understand what he was talking about. Being away from Kaena's power was enough to shake her and now with the pressure of learning these new games all of a sudden.
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@&#&$One step forward, two steps back, he lamented, deciding this to be the official theme of their interaction. At least she'd finally given him some feedback--maybe it was only one and a half steps back in that case. His ears fell against his head and he stared at her helplessly, uncertain of what he could possibly to do to "fix it." "Don't worry; it's not important," he said, flustered. "We don't have to play it, but I'll try to explain a little better anyway," he offered, thinking if she could wrap her mind around the objective she might feel better. He had half a mind to reach out and nudge her reassuringly, but the way this was going, he was afraid she'd start yelping as if he was trying to rape her or something. Every other thing out of his mouth was an assault on her mind, it seemed, and he didn't want things to be misconstrued further. Her utter lack of self-confidence and esteem was highly disconcerting.
@&#&$"There's really just three steps," he told her. "First, you find something nearby to look at. It could be anything; a tree, a rock, an animal, a plant. Second, you note what colour it is--or what colour it mostly is, in case it has several. So the trees now would be brown, a rock might be white or grey, a bird could be red, and an herb would be green in the summer," he said, speaking much slower than before and only once he was certain he had her attention. "Finally, you just say 'I spy something brown' and then it's my turn to guess what you saw," he concluded, praying it made sense if for no other reason than if it didn't, he wouldn't know what else to say. To him it was hardly complicated; although Vieira seemed more than a little off to him, she did not strike him as stupid. It was more as if she got held up somewhere than she didn't know where to go--whether or not he could reach her where she was stuck was yet to be decided. So far it didn't look good.
@&#&$"I've got to wonder, though, if you don't know any games... what do you like to do for fun?" he asked lightly, curious. Something about her was wrong but it wasn't in the same way that Hybrid was messed up. The psychopathic male had claimed he derived fun from nothing, save inflicting pain or bumping uglies with other men--and neither of these things made a lick of sense to Anselm. He guessed sex was always fun and if the Hydra swung that way, so be it, but he thought he'd sooner vomit than get anywhere near a male that way himself. Beyond that, pain was pretty much the exact opposite of fun. It was perplexing he understood this female about as much as he understood the demented male. It seemed to him as though there ought to have been less of a disconnect in this case; Vieira was polite and hardly objectionable, but no matter which way he twisted and turned, he could never quite reach her.
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Vieira wished Anselm would have left it alone but instead went on to explain despite her distress. She tried to listen should he suggest testing the game again and she thought she got the idea, but she was not sure. It did not sound like something she would want to play, at least, and she wished Kaena had not sent her away. Her gaze lifted to the sky and she watched the clouds and expected him to return to that game since she had been quick to catch on. Instead, he asked about what she did for fun and that was enough to shake her. For fun. That word was so far from her mind that she could barely come up with her own description. It was not about how much fun she had but how happy her owners were. If they were happy, she was free of pain and that was what she would strive for on a daily basis. She did what she could to avoid punishment.
"I... I need to go back," she said and her ears fell back against her head. She felt a similar rush of fear when she spoke to Rikka and her urge to get back to the cave before she got herself in trouble. She did not imagine Kaena would be upset with her over this but the pressure was too much for her to take. She did not have answers for him that did not require extensive explanation or prior knowledge. "I'm sorry, I need to go," she said with a sudden jerk of her legs and stumbled to her feet. The snow was slippery beneath her and gave her a little bit of a struggle but she did not dart off right away, as if she needed his okay or his lack of anger before she made an escape.
Her weight turned to make her way up the hill but her footing was slow in case he had to object in order to keep her here, an order she would have to follow.
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@&#&$"O.. okay," he stammered after her, rising quickly to his feet with a genuinely puzzled look on his face as she scrambled to stand up. The outburst was unexpected--he'd said nothing particularly upsetting this time, he was sure of it. By now he was convinced she was crazy; he couldn't second guess himself any longer. Initially he could write off her distress as resultant from talk of her dead mother or Kaena, but now he was just trying to explain some simple game that any three month old would pick up with ease. There certainly wasn't anything in there that should have elicited such an extreme response.
@&#&$She started to ascend the hill and he watched, dumbfounded and temporarily glued in place. "Take care of yourself," he barked after her, brows knitting into a frown. Anselm rarely felt intimidated or uncomfortable in the presence of another, but somehow Vieira had rattled him to the core. As she left he realised how tense he'd become; it was like walking on eggshells around her and he was done trying to understand why. Shaking out his coat, he began to trot further down the hill and away from the anxious coyote. Although he might have liked to return to the caves, too, he couldn't find it in him to chase after her. Their shared company clearly wasn't helping either party.
@&#&$He figured he might as well do another sweep of the borders; maybe a quick run would do good for clearing his mind. Either way, he'd been left with more than one reason to go and talk with Kaena. Something was amiss and he couldn't put his paw on it; hopefully the grizzled woman would be able to clear things up. Hell, maybe Kaena was stressed out because Vieira was so tense in the first place. The woman's insanity was much different than any he'd dealt with in the past but it was no less taxing.
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