[open] i'm caught in the cold; i'm caught in the hot

[3ofswords]

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: House 39; Riverbank, southeast bend
WHEN: June 5
OPEN TO: Credence + 2 at the house; 2 more at the river
WARNINGS: Edited as needed
STATUS: Open

---

There’s a calm after the hail storms that’s gotten under Kira’s skin, and a wave of heat strong enough to bake him into it. Trying to catch the sunrise early enough to do anything comfortably in the fields has proven more and more difficult--time hard to measure with the sun slipping the wrong way across horizons that it never seems to fully sink below. He’s had a lot of days dodging it in the house or in the trees, a lot of sleepless nights that don’t get darker than twilight, and even the animals are starting to grow listless and fatigued, like they don’t know the new rhythm of this world either.

Still, as far as disruptions go, this one is creeping, almost peaceful. The quiet of a world without his gifts is exacerbated by the literal quiet of people trying to survive the heat. Finding Bodhi asleep in disparate parts of the house and its surrounding area isn’t a new development, but Kira thinks he’s not the only one coping in a series of naps.

All places are about their people, he’d told Sonny and Veronica both, casual as only the deepest seated beliefs could be. With Sonny he hadn’t meant to be more than glib; with Veronica it had been something closer to advice. It was the kind of belief to draw a map with, which route he planned to maintain toward sanity.

Not always the easiest route, the way people keep disappearing on them. Ty, Ren, Casey, now Jyn--Kira gives Tim a month before he’s dead or gone, and he gives Sonny and Veronica two and three respectively, unable to determine if the rule is emotional support or his willingness to fucking sleep with them. Considering who he still has left, considering the headache he’s already getting up with after another fitful few hours on the bed, he’s leaning toward the latter.

People are just going to keep leaving, and here he will remain, wanting to claw out of his heat-damp skin and climb to the top of a canyon wall just to throw himself off. Maybe this is what happens when you sidestep fate. Maybe you get to survive, but you don’t get to live. 

at the house

Kira feeds the animals before he gets to work, bringing all of them out to the porch to sort through his materials. Aurora flops in her corner with one bowl of water, and Hoshi drags himself between the sun and another, until enough water has evaporated and the heat is enough that he nests himself down into the cool ceramic. It’s already hot--the sun doesn’t stay down long enough for it to cool one day to the next--but there’s as much shade on the porch as there is in the house, and what breeze comes through the canyon can actually be felt.

He settles his materials into a few piles: pulled and reclaimed shingles, some decidedly not from his own roof; stripped siding, old boards, and most important--nails. He’d settled into a long and silent fight with Casey over the ransacking of Ren’s old house, a fight Casey had won with his disappearance, leaving Kira to finish what he’d started. Leaving Kira with an understanding of the young man he’d only thought to have in his presence--when the world leaves you alone, sentimentality isn’t an option. Ren and Jyn had known that as well, though Jyn had seemed as unable to fully shake it as Kira is.

His hands are already blistered and he’s gone inside for more water before he’s even ready to head for the roof. He’d stripped more nails from the boards with a hammer from the cache at the inn, used his knife to hold them at the heads and hammer them closer to straight. It’s too hot for the work he means to do, but he can’t do it in the few hours of dark they’re getting, and he doesn’t know when the next freak storm is going to tear through. He’s not going to wait on someone to come along and do it for him--catch him fish, bring him wood; carry him back to the inn, take him away from the village when he’s sunk too deep in other people’s problems to see his own.

He’s not coming back. None of them are, and it’s time to stop needing them to.

Working against the heat, Kira carries his materials up to the attic in shifts, doing his best to splash water on his face and hydrate between. The only reason the space hasn’t become a very big, triangular oven is the ventilation of some very noticeable holes, sunlight streaming through to the rafters. It takes some trial and error to brace the boards on the sloping roof with his shoulder, the pockets of his overalls full of old nails, and hammer them into place, but he doesn’t think he’s doing too bad a job, balancing on the beams and boarding up the holes from the inside.

The only problem is how much hotter it gets as the sun rises, and the holes close. By the time he’s sitting half-out the small window, dragging his shingles out and flipping them onto the roof for the last steps, his arms are shaking and it’s more of a struggle than ever to catch his breath. When he tries to pull himself further out to follow the shingles up onto the roof, he wobbles enough to rethink finishing the project today. Instead, he slides his legs out to hang himself down, using the last of his strength to lower himself clumsily back to the porch.

Once there, he slides down on the steps, shoulder against the support beam, and keeps sliding. Down onto his side, then rolled onto his back, back on the porch and legs sprawled on the steps. At his far-flung hand, Hoshi lifts his head and sets to cawing in his small, croaking voice. Aurora shuffles up and he can feel her tongue scraping the side of his head as the bright world dims to black.

at the river

The sun has slipped close enough to the canyon walls that the shadows have lengthened, the world dimmed enough beneath the trees that Kira chances a walk. He’s still shaky, but his brush with heat sickness hasn’t eased his restlessness, his need to prove himself more than the soft civilian who gets pneumonia in a snowstorm and heat stroke in a drought, isn’t good for defending himself from even the fucking weather.

If anyone sees fit to chide him, at least he can say he stayed by plenty of water. Not that there’s as much to go around: the old edge of the river is cracked earth and smooth, exposed pebbles. It stinks, too--the fish left on the high banks aren’t very big, but they’ve been out long enough to go to rot.

Hoshi puts up enough fuss over the exposed treasures glinting under the faded light that Kira sets him down from his perch on his shoulder. His wing seems to have healed, and he has most of his feathers--but he still holds it stiff, and Kira isn’t sure it healed right. He might prove more than a quick rescue and release, no one to teach him to fly, not enough of the right feathers yet to start trying. The little bird picks at the stones, even a couple silver-scaled minnows, but eventually he finds something that captures Kira’s attention as well.

“What have you got there,” he asks, crouching gingerly at the new edge of the water, scooping the little crow back before even he can be swept away in its diminished currents. Moving aside the rest of the pebbles with his own hand, he picks up a dull metal arrowhead, antiquated in shape but so clean, he wonders if it came from the blacksmith up-stream.


[Kira has fainted from heat-sickness in the first prompt, but your character is welcome to come along at any point after he goes out on his porch and interrupt or help.]

Comments

house

[zomboligist]

When Kira comes to, there's his favourite person in the world looming above him, casting a disappointed shadow over him. He's been exchanging looks with the dog the whole time, carrying on a conversation with Aurora like she's a person who understands the idiocy of her owner. "Good," he says, clipped, when he starts seeing the fluttering of awareness. "Here I was, thinking I was going to smack you in the face," he deadpans, wringing out the cloth he's been using, the fountain water still cool enough that it won't be additional heat.

It seems like not that long ago he'd been given lectures on frostbite, apparently he should have followed up that hit single with Heatstroke: It's Going To Happen To You, Too. He feels like if he finds even one more person passed out like this, he's going to have to hold a class.

"Not to sound too much like I'm coming on to you, but I need to loosen your clothes a touch," Ravi says as he reaches back for the glass of water he'd fetched when he'd seen Kira slumping onto the porch. "Drink, I'll yell at you in about ten minutes, depending on how you're feeling."

[3ofswords]

Kira hears the voices first, filtering into something like a dream. It doesn't feel like time has passed--there was just the sudden fire of memory, a slideshow on French Impressionists from the tenth grade flickered on, and Ravi's voice came out of a Manet until suddenly it didn't.

"Funny," he struggles to answer, when the meaning of the words catches up to the world swimming back into focus. "I thought we'd have smelling salts on-hand for your hysterics."

His own voice is hoarse, scraping out of a throat dryer than he remembers setting upstairs with. He's passed out before--exhaustion, walking pneumonia, the end of too much partying--but he's never had to come to outside in the blazing sun, animals and concerned parties squalling at him. It's another moment before he can push himself up to take the glass, and his fingers don't feel entirely sure of its weight, but takes a long drink before adding: "If you saved me for a lecture, thanks, but I'd rather expire on the steps."

[zomboligist]

Ravi gives him an entirely not-so-amused look from where he's leaning over him, far from hysterics and joking. "Ha ha," he deadpans, but he's utterly serious as he moves to take Kira's pulse, not bothering to make a sassy comeback while he's trying to figure out how bad the damage is. "You can have the lecture later," he says, letting go of his hand as he works on getting the overalls a little looser, checking on his temperature.

"What were you thinking?" he asks, sounding exhausted, because that's not a lecture so much as an impassioned, serious demand to know what the hell and why he's surrounded by people so willing to put their bodies on the line.

[3ofswords]

The water only helps so much, no real escape available from the hot, dry air unless Ravi plans to chuck him into the fountain. Maybe what's on tap would suffice, if he can make it back to the bath. Kira endures a little more manhandling before he sits forward enough to shrug off the straps of his overalls entirely, letting them top half fall around his waist and trail on the porch.

"I don't want a lecture period," he reiterates, like that's the important thing. At the moment, it is--the only thing that can make this failure feel worse is being told how fucking stupid he was for trying. "I weighed one set of risks against another, and I guessed fucking wrong, I'm so sorry."

The outburst only serves to wear him out again, a pain starting to throb in his head, and he lets himself lean back against the house. When he stops arguing, color unable to get any higher on his cheeks, his eyes find a space beyond his toes to settle, going glassy.

[zomboligist]

Ravi gives him a look that says he doesn't get to request no lecture when he's acting like an idiot, but he'll get around to that later. Right now, he's just concerned about making sure Kira doesn't pass out again. His temperature seems to be getting better, so he's not going to have to search around for the coldest water he can to douse him with it, but it's almost a near thing.

"What would have happened if you had fallen off?" is all he says, knowing that he is definitely close to lecturing, he's sorry, he can't help it. "Look, I'm just worried, I fret and I nag when I get worried and it's not like I have many other hobbies around here."

[3ofswords]

"Maybe you should smoke more of the weed you've all been growing," Kira points out, pausing to drink again each time his voice dries in his throat. "Hear it does wonders for anxiety."

Rolling his head against the pillar behind him, he works a crick from his shoulder, wondering how long he was out for. Long enough for Ravi to worry, not long enough to have lost basic vocal skills. He'll have to ask present company what the range on that is at some point.

As Ravi fusses with his other wrist, with tilting his head back and looking him in the eye, Kira tests the use of his legs by extending them out and curling in his toes. That seems intact too, though he's in no hurry to try standing up. "I didn't fall off," he says, remembering that much. He'd had the presence of mind to get himself down before fainting. "But I will be more careful and pick a better time to finish the job, if one ever comes along."

[zomboligist]

"I have the already cultivated weed," is his snippy retort, like that's going to set Kira in his place when they're arguing about semantics. He breathes in and then out, knowing that Kira is okay, but this heat might do someone in and he's not sure he's ready for that, just yet. "That's all I'm asking," he says. "Take more water, try and do this in the evening when the temperature goes down at least a degree." Not that it's been very kind about that, but Ravi has to at least try.

"You're fine," he begrudgingly admits, like he'd been hoping that his histrionics hadn't been for nothing. "You should still drink more water, try and keep your clothing loose. Ideally, you should stay in a nice, shaded, cool area, but we're short on those right now."

"You could, you know, also ask for help. Get the job done twice as quickly?"

[learned_to_die]

Since the arrival of his sister, Ned has found himself seeking the solace of the woods more often. It isn't that he isn't exuberantly overjoyed at having her in his life; quite the contrary. He'd spent the last 17 years of his life without her in it, still catching ghastly hallucinations of her blood across his palms and fingertips, her voice still whispering in his ear when he least expected it. But with her arrival, and the revelation of Jon's true identity to both the man himself and his biological mother, he's found himself a bit .. overwhelmed.

He's a man of Winterfell. He keeps his emotions to himself, sparing only fleeting glances of elation, or sadness, or fury. Otherwise, he is The Quiet Wolf. Stoic, even-tempered, sometimes sullen and solemn. Rumored to have eyes to reflect the ice in his heart by his enemies. So just because he no longer walks on Westerosi soil does not mean it has ceased to exist inside of him, and he finds himself unable (and perhaps unwilling) to shed the mask.

The higher temperatures also drive him towards the forest, seeking out the sanctuary of the shade. His Northern blood practically boils in temperatures too warm for a thin coat of frost on tree and ground alike, and even though his clothing is less layered and lighter than anything he's worn before, he still finds himself sweltering. But the river has held no relief over recent days, drying up and withdrawing from the bank like a receding hand. That is a different curiosity entirely.

He's loitering a bit upstream from where he hears the murmuring, slowly recognizing the person the voice belongs to. He remembers the boy he pulled from the fountain, when the frigid air had reminded him of home. He remembers talk of biting insects and fevers. He meanders towards where he thinks Kira might be to see the boy crouching by the riverbank as he nears, rummaging for something in the barren bank. He sees the flicker of something dark and black in his other hand.

"Anything interesting?" he asks, staying a respectable distance away until invited to move closer.

[3ofswords]

Even young crows, in Kira's experience, have an idea of how they feel about people. Hoshi hadn't much choice in his captivity over the last few weeks, but Kira's done nothing to confine him once he felt confident Aurora would treat him gently, if she bothered him at all. Given the choice, Hoshi hasn't strayed more than a few yards from him since.

That trust seems to extend to others as well, the little bird lifting his sparsely feathered head to cock one eye at Ned, flapping his good wing somewhere between a greeting and splashing a bit of water over himself. There's no alarmed crying or move to get away, so Kira leaves him where he is, uncovering another arrowhead and lifting it to catch the light where Ned can see it.

"He found these," he says, lifting it a little higher to offer it to the other man. "Do they look at all used, to you? I can't really tell the difference."

[learned_to_die]

Ned allows himself to draw closer at the silent invitation, keeping a curious eye on the young bird near the water's edge, and extending a hand for the stone being offered. No, it isn't a stone, he realizes upon closer inspection; it's very clearly an arrowhead, and a bronze one at that. He runs a finger tip against the side of it and then along its length to test its sharpness. It pricks him a bit, but nothing more than what might be sustained with a gliding piece of parchment. He glances at his nicked thumb before returning his attention to the artifact.

"Observant crow," Ned comments with a fond gaze in the bird's direction. "They're a bit worn, though .. not nearly as much as one would expect, given the length of time I assume they've spent in the water," he says, crouching down to inspect the bank himself. "They should've turned green by now, but if you look at it," he holds it out in front of both of them, "It looks almost new, as though just forged. It's still a bit sharp, which means its loss of severity is most likely due to the rushing water, not the dullness that comes with piercing skin or leather."

Ned's eyes sweep the exposed bank before landing on the bird again.

"Made a friend, eh? We use ravens back home to deliver messages. Bit different from a crow, but there's something comforting in seeing him here. The order Jon had been a part of, the Night's Watch, was often called crows, too, as they wore all black. Where'd you find 'em?"

[3ofswords]

"Ravens are ugly flash bastards," Kira says, as if for Hoshi's benefit. As if he wouldn't have just as easily scooped up a broken raven out of the leaf-litter and named it after a piece of the night sky. Still: he nudges the little bird with his wrist until he gets some kind of scraping agreement.

They're both hoarse, though Hoshi with better reason. As Ned examines the arrow, Kira wets his hand in the new edge of the river, cooling it before lifting it to his cheek. If Ravi saw him out here, he'd probably commit him to the hospital for flagrant disregard for his own life, or something. As ever is the case for such behavior, the truth lies somewhere closer to a mix of boredom and a feeling of helplessness.

His other hand still holds the second arrowhead, and beyond it, Hoshi is earnestly pushing at stones with his beak, finding another now that his first two have been taken away. "Do you think they were put here? Maybe made just to be put here?"

It would fit the way most things work, in this place.

[learned_to_die]

"I will not argue you there," Ned replies with an amused quip of laughter. "They grow into beautiful things though, don't they? Something alluring in feathers the color of the night. And it seems quite fond of you, never straying too far. Have you given it a name?"

Ned sees the glisten of water at Kira's cheek, syncs it with the peripheral sight of him lifting the cool water to his skin. Now that Ned's more aware, he notices a slight flush under the surface. He will circle back to the topic, he decides.

"Made? By whom?" His brows flinch with concern as he glances from the Kira to the riverbed to the bird to the arrowhead still in his hand. He remembers the feast only weeks prior, how Jon had claimed it to be a gift from the Old Gods. He'd implied heavily that there was some .. divine intervention by something or some things unseen, but - why would they place arrowheads in the river? It does seem all too suspect, to have the water recede at precisely the moment the arrowheads would appear. And the thing itself is far too perfect, far too pristine for it to have been buried beneath water and rubble alike. Ned finally brings his attention back to Kira, this time with an undercurrent of worry in his eyes. "The theory would not be all that far-fetched, given the strange events throughout the village. But to what end?"

[3ofswords]

There's a balancing act to speaking with people like Ned, or Jyn, or Credence--the refusal to give up himself, but wanting to frame things in a way they might understand. Without his gifts, he has to guess at it, think about the cadence of voices and the words they do or don't use. What he's said in the past that trips the flow of conversation, or derails it into an inexpert explanation of helicopters to a boy who's barely lived the invention of the plane.

Kira flattens his hand and leans his head into the cup of it, still cool to the touch for a moment. His other draws a finger down the little crow's head and back, watching him try to puff up his wings and downy, patchy feathers in response. "Hoshi," he answers. "The...people I come from, in their language, it means star."

A bright point in the sky, nothing at all to do with those dark feathers, but Credence had insisted on a name at all, and it's never been an effort to do him a kindness. Easier than finding one in a conversation about their mysterious captors: "Probably to fuck with us," he adds, all pretense of couching his answers in Ned's manners abandoned. "Why do they do anything?" Why hail, why heat, why walls they can't climb and a fountain they can't understand?

River

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi has worked out a similar theory with regard to shade and the river. Stick to the darker spots within eyeshot of water (not very appealing water right now, admittedly) and probably don't die. He's slightly concerned he might do that anyway. Maybe this is normal for planets with a summer, but he hates it and wants it to stop. His meandering walk has been far less soothing and more stewing over general irritation with everything that's ever happened today.

Kira is a welcome distraction. Admittedly, Bodhi could catch him any time and often goes days without bothering to do that, haunting the house in distracted silence when he's there, but right now he feels like it. The vague inclination becomes actual interest (or as close as he can get with his brain half cooked) when it turns out looking at rocks is an option. "What is it?" Greetings and social niceties are for other weather. And, honestly, other people.

[3ofswords]

Had he found him before he started his project, would Kira have enlisted Bodhi's help? He isn't sure, which probably means no, and maybe the exhaustion he's going to live with for the next few days is a slap on the wrist for that.

He's been treating the man with kid gloves since he found him--and maybe he deserved it then, feverish and wandering in fog--but at this point it's just been a means to making himself feel better. A means that involved very little effort and no heat-stroke equivalent consequences. Credence had been good for that too, and maybe the stupidity he's displayed today was a bit like a parent letting their charge out of the nest--with no one to take care of, feel capable around, he'd tried to take care of the house.

"Arrowheads, I think. Bronze, maybe?" All he has to go by is color--the stones at their feet would be more his thing, agate and tiger's eye. The shop had one of those obligatory bins of semi precious stones, so many ounces for so many dollars. Tourist shit, but every bit helped to keep the lights on and Chiyo in school. "They look more old-fashioned than old," he adds, handing one up to the man. Hoshi follows, stumbling until he comes to rest at the tip of Bodhi's boot. Whether it's the transfer of the shiniest object he's seen today, or an affinity for Bodhi himself, Kira can't yet say.

[onlyeverdoubted]

From a world with blasters, Bodhi has very little context for what an arrowhead might actually be, but he follows. It's not hard to figure out the pointy, obviously artificial thing, after all. He doesn't know what bronze is, but he does know a bit about ore extraction and processing. He used to mainly run cargo for mining operations. Common assignment for a pilot just starting out. Equipment in, ore out, handled by droids and automated systems most places that didn't require tricky flying on the way in and out.

"It's... not the same metal as the tools and kitchen things," he says tentatively. Mysterious things pop up all over the place here, of course, but this is stranger than most and apparently wasn't put there for their use. "Could it have been lost by someone here?" Thanks to the mystery boxes there are all kinds of odd things floating around, and it is sort of pretty, in a quiet way.

He doesn't know what to make of the bird, but he keeps an eye on it uncertainly, not sure if those are overtures of friendship and, if they are, what he's supposed to do in return. He's careful not to move his foot, anyway.

[3ofswords]

Hoshi curls his entire body into a little hay stack of black feathers, beak pointed up and opening impressively wide to give Bodhi a long, crisp croak of greeting. He repeats it twice more before shuffling--more like rolling--into the damp stones beneath their feet, pecking at whatever catches his eye.

"My mother always said crows are a good judge of character." There's fondness for both of them in Kira's wan smile, before he sets to digging out another piece. Three so far, and it's a curious enough thing for him to follow Hoshi's ambling path down stream, stopping to brush apart the stones and pick up another.

"Maybe? I think it's been almost a year with this group, and those who first arrived talk sometimes about evidence that there were people even before that. If they have a smith, I guess it would make sense that they made weapons." Where they got the materials is probably as good a question as where his own clothes came from.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi spends a few moments regarding the funny looking little creature with an uncertain interest. He's never known much about animals, a city kid without pets who went on to a minimalist life in space. This one is nice, he's sure. About how he feels about the dog. He should really try more. Fortunately, Kira distracts him before he gets around to feeling inadequate because he doesn't know what to do with critters.

He follows slowly and bends down to look as well. "It does look more like a weapon than a tool..." All the local tools are silly, but he knows better than to bring up lasers and other accouterments of civilization. "I... guess there are people who might want it for hunting." He sounds a bit reluctant. It's pretty and interesting, and being practical is an effort.

[3ofswords]

"You know, in all the weird stuff people have found," Kira comments, thinking over the casings in his bedside drawer and the modern looking hatchets he'd found at Christmas, "Even when some of it looks recent to me, no one's ever found a gun."

It isn't a complaint by any means--he's more comfortable in a place without them, for all the other reasons this place makes him uncomfortable. But it feels like a kind of rule, when so few of this place had been made clear to them. Don't watch the fountain, don't climb the walls--limits on gifts make sense, when they're being manufactured and delivered by invisible observers.

"Do you even have arrows, where you're from?" It didn't seem like a concept any more beyond interstellar races than tea, but perhaps they were as different as the bricks and boiler in Bodhi's set to the plain kettle.

house

[repressings]

Credence has been told by exactly two people that he probably shouldn't wander around in a long-sleeved shirt and maybe roll his overalls up, and while he appreciates the still foreign feeling that people care about him, he doesn't want to broadcast how ill behaved he's been all his life. So the scars keep hidden, save for the ones on his palms he can't hide, and he wears his overalls, and currently, he has a white button down from a suit he'd been given at Christmas that does the trick.

He'll just be careful, he thinks, and take frequent trips to the fountain and the waterfall. The days are hotter, the sun is strange, and Credence finds it a little worrying that he was thankful that this is what the month threw at them instead of another monster or another death.

And to the fountain he goes, planning on dipping his cloth, his hat, anything he can to keep cool, and it's as he passes Kira that he stops.

"That's an awful strange place to sleep," Credence calls out, and it's only after taking a few steps that he realizes Kira isn't sleeping--he's unconscious.

Heat be damned, he rushes to the other's side, eyes wide, panicking--Kira can't be dead, Kira can't be dead, there's no way--

"Kira? Kira, please wake up," He's scooped his head up, setting it in his own lap, shaking him a little rougher than he probably should.

"Mr. Kira, please."

[3ofswords]

For a long moment, Kira just moves for Credence's hands like a rag doll, lolling and boneless. Behind his eyelids is a rapid slideshow of images, memories--firing off without any logic to guide them, until it's summer in New York and the sun is catching a glare as it sets behind the nearest bank headquarters, and Kira's name is coming out of Ty's face in Credence's voice.

He blinks, eyes open, but not really awake. His hand lifts though he isn't sure who for, or what he means to do with it, then drops heavy back to his side.

"Who," he manages to ask, mouth gummy, tongue feeling thick in his mouth. He has to close his eyes against a blooming pain in his head, squeezing them shut and groaning. His feet drag on the boards as he tries to bend his legs, get some leverage to move himself at all, and he manages to turn over in Credence's lap, cheek pressed to thigh and one hand weakly pushing at his stomach as if to lever himself or push Credence away.

It's all the effort he can make, finding his limp posture from before much easier on his leaden body and aching head. He can't make himself speak, or really consider what to say: he just groans again, trapped where he's fallen.

[repressings]

Oh, this is not good. This is not good at all. Credence bites down as much of the panic as he can and forces himself to try to push through it--he can't afford to lose himself in a panic, he can't afford to be a nervous wreck, something is wrong with Kira.

He drags Kira rather haphazardly from the porch to the inside of the house, trying his best not to give into the urge he has to viciously shake him, and it's only as he stumbles back up from putting him in the middle of the floor that he remembers one of the first things Kira had told him when the days were getting far too hot. It's heatsickness. Kira's heatsick.

Apologizing to Kira despite his unconscious state, Credence yanks off the other's top and tosses it hastily to the side, running to the kitchen to grab a cloth and the biggest glass he can muster. They're dipped and poured in the coolest water he can get, and he hurriedly runs back to put his head in his lap again.

He can do this. It's like taking care of Mr. Graves that one time, or Modesty when she was ill. He just needs water. Credence dabs the cloth on his face before deciding it's probably going to take way too long.

"Kira?"

When he gets no response, he rings the cloth out above Kira's forehead, hoping at least some cool water will jolt him awake.

"Kira, you have to wake up to drink some water..."

[3ofswords]

He is awake--enough to sputter and obstinately think it in Credence's general direction, but so much of him is heavy, so much of what he wants his body to do is slippery and fleeting. For now he tries to lick some of the water splashed on his lips, blink it free of his dark lashes.

When he sighs, he does so deeply, but it does little to improve his situation.

At least with his eyes open he can see that he's been moved inside, and the jostling of being moved comes back to him, the attempt before that to wake up and speak, the loss of his shirt. The water on his face is the only moisture he feels at all--no sweat, and it doesn't even feel very hot anymore--he feels warm and dry and probably his brain is boiling in his fucking head, shit.

"Get," he starts, voice rasping over his dry and swollen tongue. He has to think about what he wants to say, help not likely to get him anywhere fast. Credence might run all the way across the village to get Tina or Graves, and Kira can think of one person who might be closer, who he might actually be able to stand seeing him this way. "Credence," he tries again, not even lifting his head, "Go to the church, it's just through the trees. See if Sonny can help."

[repressings]

Oh, God. Oh, God, Kira is going to die. He's sure, he's sure, and Kira's hoarse words jolt Credence. He nods, sliding away and up from the ground, looking at his best friend briefly befeore running as fast as he possibly can.

"Sonny!" He starts shouting halfway to the church, soft voice cracking from the volume he's using, unused to it. "Sonny!" He shouts again, and again and again as he breaks from the trees and immediately scrambles up to the church, opening the door and barely stopping to run in.

He's panicked, face flushed, and all he can think of is how Kira's voice was raspy and how strangely pale he looked. He immediately spots Sonny and, urgently, panting, manages two words:

"It's Kira."

[ottimismo]

It's a quiet day, like most days here are. The loudest things tend to be the birds overhead and the storms that roll in, and there are none of those today. It's so hot, not even the wildlife has the energy to do much, and the clouds are somewhere cooler, shading somebody else.

He's just gotten finished washing the sheets that cover the furniture in their little church, and he's starting to drape them over couches and chairs when he hears the shouts. It's Credence's voice, he can tell that much. But nothing else about it is familiar, the shouting and lack of Mister in front of his own name making it sound entirely foreign. He's nearly to the door when Credence bursts in, already on high alert when he speaks.

It's Kira.

Sonny moves, long legs carrying him across the room in record time, putting a hand on Credence's back and urging him to the door without thinking of personal space and boundaries. He'll apologize later, when the panic of whatever's going on has subsided.

"Take me to him," he orders, the authority in his voice comfortable and fitting, even if it's so rarely used here.