Slow Rider, Slow Rider, Move On a Little More

[pretendtoneedme]

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: 6I's Town Hall
WHEN: July 10th
OPEN TO: Everyone who wants in. There will be one subheader for welcoming back the group and one for the actual meeting
WARNINGS: Nothing so far; please add headers in the comment subjects if something does come up that could be problematic

---

The return is, when everything is said and done, uneventful. The group who went to explore the break in the canyon walks back into the village in the early afternoon, laden down with most of the supplies they'd brought with them and without any obvious injury. There's some scratches, a couple bruises, but whatever had happened to seal them away from the village for a week definitely didn't happen to them, and they're not buzzing with any news so world-shattering that everyone needs to be collected and reported to at once. There's enough time for the group to separate and grab showers, clean clothes, and something to eat, while the word passes from person to person that the explorers have returned and that there's going to be a meeting right after dinner for them to explain what they've found and answer questions.

At the appointed time, the five of them are there, looking less ragged, and ready to talk. They've brought a few things back with them to show the others in the village, but all in all there's just not a lot to show about the other side that's different - except for that one, giant thing. But the non-changes are going to be shocking enough for most people, and decisions have to be made about what to do with the information they have now.

Comments

Bodhi

[onlyeverdoubted]

He's battered and grubby, but for the most part, Bodhi looks fairly chipper. He's a little laden down, since he insisted on bringing his samples back to compare. He's pretty sure he's right, but a few comparisons in the field are just good practice, right? So yeah, there are rocks in his pack along with supplies. His first priority is checking in with his friends (especially Credence, who he's trying very hard not to let occupy his thoughts, as though worrying would make things worse somehow), but a close second is verifying that all his rock samples match their corresponding spots on this side. Which they do. And that verification may possibly be done in the process of checking in with people and making his way home.

He doesn't hesitate for a moment heading there, even unsure of the extent of the damage from the quake as he is. Having a home is weird, sure, but somewhere along the line he made that connection and he isn't letting go of it easily. Home features his first shave since arriving here (the overgrown hair and beard actually managed to get in his way over on the other side) and his second mysterious box.

After everything, this gift doesn't shatter him the way the last one did. It feels like a challenge. Maybe not one he's quite up to, but one he's prepared to accept. When he heads back out, it's with his beard and hair tamed back down to quirky shaping and in a Jedhan-style tunic, headscarf, and cloak ensemble that would have struck him as silly and old fashioned not very long ago.

house 39

[3ofswords]

"You could have just told me you wanted to do it yourself," Kira doesn't quite chide, "instead of slinking off mid-lie about errands you never do." It's nice to see Bodhi again: it's nice to see Bodhi under the layers of hermit-scruff, closer to the man he invited to live in his house months ago.

It's a strange thought: he's known Bodhi longer than he'd known Casey. Longer than he got to know Ren, almost as long as Jyn. He might even be starting to understand him.

Just starting.

Kira's sitting at the righted kitchen table when Bodhi returns from his grooming. The clothes make sense--not in a familiar way, but as a gift, and Bodhi seems much improved by his trip across the divide. No weapons or running from magical badgers needed, it seems. "Would you make some of that stronger tea," he asks, rather than getting up to offer food and something made with the regular kettle. There's still a wheeze in his chest from a cold he caught in the rain, and this time he's not going to overwork himself into a bout of pneumonia.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"I didn't really want to do it myself until it was in my way," he says pithily, holding onto the certain wave of self-satisfaction. He doesn't want to risk letting go of the mood, because he can't imagine it'll come back easily.

Asking for tea is a good way to keep it rolling. Soothing and satisfying, and he'd been wanting a cup for himself anyway. With a nod, he pulls the set free, setting out the bronze pot and all its little accouterments. One of the cups did crack during the quake, but the cups were never as important as being able to go through every step the right way. His whisk is a little bent and one of the brazier's little legs has a slight wobble to it now, but it's a small issue, easily worked around. That happens. As he efficiently snaps every piece onto the table, he asks, "Spiced, smoked, or fermented?" For a moment, he sounds so much like his father (or maybe it's just that now he's dressed like him) that he alarms himself a bit, but he tries to ignore it.

[3ofswords]

"It's always been in your way," he argues, shifting to curl up better in his chair now that he knows he doesn't have to move from it. The sleeves of his red sweater are stretched out--all of it is stretched out, loaned to people taller and wider and eventually put back on him in the chilly nights after the quake. "In the way of people knowing I shack up with a handsome explorer who makes tea, instead of some hermit I coaxed out of the woods."

Flipping the ends of his sleeves over his hands, he sinks his chin into them over his knees, sighing like it's been very hard to live with the blow to his image.

"Spiced, please."

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi snorts quietly. "Sounds like it was in your way," he says as he examines his bricks of tea. The spice one is the most depleted by a narrow margin. He already made a rule for himself that he won't horde the stuff, or he'd be afraid to ever touch it. The bricks would sit wrapped and perfect and utterly useless. If this is the last taste he or anyone else will have of Jedha (even if it's imaginary, created by whatever hands send the gifts), he wants those tastes frequent and widespread. He snatches a bit of smoldering wood from the stove for the brazier and snaps off a corner of the tea brick without missing a beat. "Anything exciting while I was gone?"

[3ofswords]

"I'm glad you're realizing my way is the one that matters," he answers imperiously, still hunkered down in a stretched and fraying sweater like the mulish prince of a very raggedy kingdom. Considering the splintered couch frame and the ugly scratches and scuffs on his throne, that's more or less what he is in his own home.

The gentle smoke and the spice of the tea is part of it, but it's more memory than actual smell through the lingering cold. "Credence made a friend his own age. Granted, they were trapped in a cave for two days, but whatever works. I caught a cold, Hoshi found a coin in the mud I spent an hour cleaning off of him. Very thrilling."

[onlyeverdoubted]

While it's good that Credence has more friends, Bodhi was under the impression that the two of them were friends his own age already, unless he's seriously miscounted somewhere along the line. Trapped in a cave is... probably something he should bring up to Credence, if at all. It sounds excruciating, of course, and his protective instincts flare at the mere thought, but at least it's over. He zeroes in on what he can actually effect here and now. Looking up from grinding the tea into Kira's cup, he nods sagely. "Very ambitious of Hoshi. I'm glad he's holding up the initiative, gathering important evidence..." He might be too easily amused.

[3ofswords]

"He's good for anything shiny," Kira agrees, gaze moving down the table to his bird. Hoshi is perched on the opposite edge like a fluffy gargoyle, likely hoping more insects will come quite literally out of the woodwork, as they had in the rainy days after the quake. "He can join the next expedition over."

Flicking his gaze back to Bodhi, he doesn't ask about the trip yet, knowing if he takes his time there will still be a meeting at some point to discuss anything of interest. Sartorial choices, on the other hand, are always worth comment. "Are those clothes from the box?"

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi looks down consciously. "Um." Well, the short answer is easy. He nods to buy himself time, not sure how much else he should say. Not because it's a secret, but because it's hard to gauge how much Kira would care to know, how much dismal baggage he can keep out of any explanation he could give. He swallows, reaches for every scrap of optimism he's wrung out of the past few days, and says simply, "I always sort of thought I'd turn into my father, but I can't remember why I minded that idea." He sets the finished tea in front of Kira with something like the flair he remembers from the shop in what seems like someone else's life.

[3ofswords]

"Parents make us unhappy sometimes," he says, with all the ennui of a person who hasn't breathed through their nose in a week. One hand escapes the press of his chin to fit around the mug, just absorbing the heat of it for now. "Usually because young people are stupid and pick dangerous things to make them happy, and it's our parents' jobs to make sure we live long enough to know why we were stupid."

If he's going to be either of them, it's his mother, and he'd spent too long thinking he wouldn't grow up into anything at all to mind that. "I think every person with parents has felt like they'll be more--something, than them. More fun, more successful, less ignorant." He looks down at his mug. "Better at tea."

[onlyeverdoubted]

"It had a lot more to do with where than who." Living through the slow decline of NiJedha had really cramped his teenage rebellion. Unless you actually went out and joined the then-disorganized insurgencies, it was hard to get much of a sense of self from testing boundaries. No need to turn sheer orneriness on parents when the world was slowly crumbling everywhere around. It was being tied to the corpse of the Holy City that he'd fled from, a resignation to the decline, a reluctance to defy duty and a certain conditional security in the hope of something better.

Instead of explaining any of that, he starts a second cup for himself and shrugs. "I'll never be half as good at tea, though."

[3ofswords]

Even when he had a sense of Bodhi's ruminations--perhaps because he had a sense of it--Kira never prodded him to elaborate on the fragments he spoke aloud. A person's story is their own, not to be forced out, and his large not-friend seems all the more reticent of a man.

Kira isn't half as interested in Baze's take on whatever happened to them. If Jyn were here, she'd probably explain it like a cup having the entire contents of a jug poured into her, overflowing with grief and errant detail. All he would have to do is ask.

Resting his chin in an idling hand, on an idling elbow at the table's edge, Kira watches Bodhi shrug and deflect, fussing with the tea set and letting the crytpic remark settle.

Kira is a little tired of cryptic remarks, giving or receiving. "You never talk much about where you grew up, or why you left with the others."

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi goes very quiet for a moment. For all he doesn't talk very much, he tends to create a faint buzz around him, the assorted incidental sounds of fidgeting, humming a note or two, drumming his fingers, bumping into stuff. He's just never... still. For a moment, his heartbeat is too loud in his ears and and he bites down on his lip hard enough to hurt. The answer he wants to give hovers on his tongue. No, I don't. And Kira would probably relent.

But he doesn't ask much. A cup of tea every few weeks, Bodhi's share of household chores (performed clumsily and at odd times), time spent with the dog. Bodhi hadn't realized until now how much depended on the agreement that seemed to subsist between them--don't ask me and I won't ask you. Share no burdens, accept none. After he wrestles for a moment, he finishes the cup of tea and sits down at the table.

"I didn't. I mean, leave with them, I was gone as soon as the pilot's academy would... I met the others--" Jyn, Cassian, Baze, Chirrut, K, staggeringly significant but total strangers, too. "Days before I got here. Not completely sure, a lot of hyperspace jumps and, well, things were..." He really did mean to give a true answer, but he's already clearly getting lost.

[chirrutsluck]

Once Baze hears the whole troupe of them is back in town, of course he's going to check on Bodhi. He's pretty sure someone would have told him (someone being Clint) if anything terrible had happened, but he does like to see with his own eyes. He shows up at the house again, though hopefully this time Bodhi hasn't locked himself in the basement so he'll actually see the man, and when he knocks it's less of a demanding pound than last time.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi isn't surprised at the knock and, holding onto his buoyant mood for dear life, opens it without waiting to see if Kira'd rather be all together and functional for him. He's not really expecting anyone in particular (maybe hoping for Credence, a little), yet he's still surprised to see Baze somehow. He would have expected to see the man eventually, but right away? He's faintly pleased, if a little embarrassed.

And then realizes what he has on. He refused to even hesitate, fought off the urge to sob in the woods again for a while with every ounce of will power he possesses, and he's rather proud of it. This is who he--Well, not exactly who he is, maybe a little of who he would have been in a better world. The Imperial pilot's uniform draped on the bed in his room is testimony to how many might have beens there could be. All that logic doesn't hold up quite as well when he's standing in front of the only person who'd be able to recognize it. "Hello," he says as evenly as he can, ready to be judged pretty hard.

[chirrutsluck]

Baze's brows go up, but honestly, it's less at the content of the costume change and more at the fact that there was one at all. He does pick up that Bodhi seems nervous or guilty about it, but he doesn't put together that it's because he's defiantly not wearing an Imperial uniform anymore. So what he asks, somewhat skeptically, is: "You found new clothes on the other side of the canyon?"

[onlyeverdoubted]

"It's, oh, has no one--There are these boxes that sometimes turn up. It's like the fountain." He shifts to lean against the doorframe to chat, realizes it's a bit rude, and corrects himself mid-lean to hold the door open so Baze can come inside. It feels a bit daring, but Kira always wants him to act like the house is his, too, and he's never invited a guest before. Well, unless you count Johanna turning up to steal food, but that's not really a matter of invitation so much as not feeling it necessary to chase her off with a broom like the other raccoons. "Sometimes there are useful things but... But usually it's just strange. This is my second one."

[chirrutsluck]

There's nothing that Baze sees as particularly daring about it, but then, he considers this Bodhi's house as much as it's Kira's already. So he nods, steps inside, and then says, "It looks more comfortable than the last one. And cleaner." Not that he can talk. His scrubs get cleaned, obviously, but they're all he has, so they're a little worse for wear. He's used to it, given his situation before their arrival here, but that doesn't mean he has to like it. "The boxes come from our captors?"

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi had been getting by in his scrubs for about six months and they were about to disintegrate off him mid-stride. The beneficence of their mystery captors might have simply been an attempt to preserve everyone else's modesty. He's just glad Baze doesn't think it's worth much comment. Frankly, the outfit is a bit old-fashioned, the subtle Kyber Temple colors and austere cut suggestive of a pious, traditional Jedhan that Bodhi never had a chance to grow to be. It's probably best unremarked on.

"They must. When Jyn was here she got a kyber crystal, but of course there's nothing to do but... Acknowledge it, here." Nothing to power, no temple structure. Kira made him take it (by being polite and concerned, the bastard), and now Bodhi doesn't have much choice but to tiptoe around it, feeling faintly profane for having it in his possession given his own history. "So it's not always this useful. Do you want tea?"

[chirrutsluck]

It's typical Jedhan clothing. Why would he remark on it? He knows Bodhi grew up on the same moon he did, it's probably what he's most comfortable in, as far as he's concerned. It might even be a relief that he didn't get that awful imperial uniform, so Baze doesn't have to see it all the time. "I just came to see you got back safely," he says. "You don't have to make me tea. You have a kyber crystal?"

He has some mixed feelings about that. Not that Bodhi in particular has it, but that there is one here, at all.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"It looks like one. It's not like I'm..." He wouldn't really be able to tell it from a comparable structure without some way to do a chemical analysis. There's only so much mineralogical work one can do by looking. If anyone here were Force sensitive, but that's a moot point for the time being.

Looking for a less sensitive subject to light on, he nods toward the kitchen anyway. "I make everyone tea. I promise I won't think you like me if you have some." When he wants to, Bodhi can deadpan very effectively.

[chirrutsluck]

Baze can deadpan, right back, Bodhi. "Oh good. I would hate for anyone to think that." Even though he's here checking on him, and spends probably more time with Bodhi than anyone else so far. Why would anyone think he liked him, right? "All right, make me your tea. It just means I will be here longer."

That's half a warning (Bodhi will have to put up with him for longer) and half a question (does he actually want to chat and interact for that long). Hopefully, he's not interrupting anything, but he doesn't honestly know what all Bodhi does besides drift around the village and, apparently, make tea.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"These things happen." Bodhi shrugs and heads for the kitchen to pull out the tea set, which is just as Jedhan as his new clothes. That's the real reason he's insisting. He's insisted on making tea for most of his friends already, and it would seem unfair not to inflict it on someone who actually had a chance to taste the real thing. The bronze kettle and all its little accouterments are straight out of an old fashioned tea shop, and Bodhi breaks a corner off a pressed block of tea in a particularly archaic gesture. He opts for the plain, lightly fermented stuff, figuring that a monk (even an ex-monk) will probably be a traditionalist, at least in some ways.

[chirrutsluck]

That's another surprise, and Baze pauses at the entry to the kitchen. It's homey and familiar and very unexpected here. "You got tea, too?" he asks, a bit blankly. AS long as it isn't the forsaken Tarine....

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi unwraps a few old fashioned pressed blocks of tea. One of them does release the heavy, smoky scent of Tarine when it's unwrapped, but Bodhi sets that aside for himself. The one he breaks a corner off to toast over the tiny brazier for Baze is much lighter, in color almost as much as smell. "Boxes," he says with a one-shouldered shrug. What can you do.