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sixthiterationlogs2017-06-05 01:06 pm
3ofswords) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2017-06-05 01:06 pm
[open] i'm caught in the cold; i'm caught in the hot
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.]
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.]
no subject
It doesn't take much for him to realize he's out of his depth in even attempting to answer a question such as that, and so all he shares with the boy is a compassionate softening of his face, and a slight shrug of his shoulders.
That quickly fades and gives way to one of concern.
"Are you all right, Kira?" he asks, brows lifting together in curiosity. "Is it the heat?"
no subject
It's weird to think of them that way. Manhattan had been home. He'd been taking refuge across the street from his mother's building.
"I'm fine," he sighs, lifting a hand idly to shoulder-height before dropping it back to the stones beneath him. "I overworked myself earlier, now I'm just tired. I figured it would be cooler here."
no subject
Ned eyes Kira for a second longer before glancing back towards Hoshi.
"Where I'm from, and where the others of my family are from, is in the very northern part of Westeros. Wintry sort of place. We'd had an unusually long summer - about ten years or so - before I'd arrived here, but still - Winterfell, as the name suggests, is always colder than further south. The further north you go, the more frigid. This heat," he gestures vaguely to their surroundings with his hand, "is worse than what I'd experienced when I'd been in King's Landing." He pauses, then adds for explanation, "It's the, eh, capital of Westeros, and about a three-week journey down the King's Road from Winterfell. I've found myself with a spinning head on more than one occasion since the temperatures have risen."
no subject
"Did you talk this much around your own children," he asks, not the most gracious response, but graciousness has never been one of his virtues. Having virtues has never really been one of his virtues.
Moving the stone, he presses its other side below his other eye, until it heats close enough to the skin to be of no use. Kira discards it for Hoshi's inspection, trailing his fingers again across his pluming feathers. As much work as the animals are, he's grateful of them on these long days. Maybe he could have weathered his father's silences better with a different kind of company, void of speech.
no subject
"Eventually, one learns that around one's own brood, it's often best to say less with words and more with actions and looks."
no subject
But he knew his mother, because she spoke to him. He didn't have to rely on the gift, he got to know her in what she divulged, what she chose to show and to tell. "Some things are important to say. Some people need to hear them, even if you think you've shown it."
I love you, I'm proud of you; you can tell me what's wrong.
no subject
"Perhaps saying things, things that are important, should be something for me to work on moving forward."
no subject
They should be dead; they're not; they're Schrodinger's fucking village living in binary.
He puts Hoshi in his lap just to feel it, tell himself that it's real, it has to be, even if really being trapped here is no consolation. "If my family were here," and he doesn't mean it to be accusatory, just--no one here seems to have as much family as Ned and his children. "If were trapped here with some fucked-up second chance, I'd tell them everything. Good or bad or pointless. I'd talk to them until I ran out of breath."
no subject
There isn't a single person in the Seven Kingdoms who'd ever heard of Lord Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, and associated him with chatter. Many had probably never heard his voice, even if they had had the opportunity to meet him in person. Written correspondence was much of the same - only what was necessary, only what was needed in order to convey a message with as few words as possible.
But there is a great deal of truth in Kira's suggestion. Ned grits his teeth a bit as his inner conflict grows.
"I'd left so many things unsaid before I arrived here, and had all future opportunities to reveal those things stolen when I was executed," he says quietly. "I shouldn't waste a second chance, as you said." The steel of his eyes fades and melts again. "Thank you."
no subject
Technology, magic--at some point it's all relative. Maybe he died face down in the snow, two fire-escapes down from those antibiotics. The rioters came back, or he just fell asleep in the cold.
Now someone's making him dream about a heat wave, building something, testing him. Unplugging them at random, who fucking knows. It doesn't always feel like a second chance for him, with no one he knew, and no idea what he was supposed to be doing the first time around. "No problem," he sighs, shrugging elegantly with his hands braced on loose stones. "Any time."