And there she'd sit serenely 'neath the thorns upon the holly

[onlyeverdoubted]

WHO: Bodhi
WHERE: Around the forest, his house, wandering random paths
WHEN: 10/11-10/12, general second half of the month
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: (Please warn for adult content or anything triggering)

---

Tricks: 10/11-10/12

Bodhi is on one of his usual rambles, theoretically looking out for useful edibles (though they're getting much rarer as the the weather turns further toward what he considers comfortable) and firewood, but really doing his best to smooth out the jagged lines between stray thoughts. He's as calm as he gets, poking his way along, when he spots a koyo melon poking out from the bushes.

It doesn't immediately strike him as unusual. He's not from a planet where big, sweet fruit can really be grown, and he doesn't know a thing about koyo production. There's no real reason it shouldn't be there. It does seem like a really lucky stroke, though, and he immediately begins poking around looking for more. Koyo are pretty good when they're bought half-mummified at a space station. They must be amazing when they're fresh. Eventually he gives up spotting any more and reaches for the one he does see, hoping there's no weird trick to picking melons that his city boy soul isn't privy to.

Apparently there is, because... No melon. That's not just weird, it's petty and mean. Which... alright, maybe he shouldn't be surprised.

He's not aware his hair's gone neon purple until he passes a reflective surface, unless someone tells him. Interestingly, it's just the hair--the carefully shaped beard and rather prominent eyebrows are their usual warm, rusty black. A close look will reveal a stark line through the stubble of his undercut where it becomes sideburns, black to purple as sudden as though it were drawn in with a ruler.

He's mostly nonplussed, but it is kind of an odd choice. Whimsy is new.

Someone's going to have to tell him what Halloween is.

Intergalactic Leaf Pepper: Latter half of October

Bodhi has no idea what fall is.

Well, intellectually he can figure it out. This part of this planet (or carefully managed space station) is very seasonal, and conditions change when that happens. He's not even totally unfamiliar with the idea of plants doing stuff in response to cold. He's landed on dozens of planets, though, admittedly, he's mostly spent his time in spaceports that deliberately look exactly like all the others and serve the same bad noodles and suspect caf. He can't pretend to be worldly about this, and the only world he's spent enough time on to really have a sense of such a change is his own. Jedha's seasons comprised a few weeks of hard, chilly rain and an endless, unrelenting rest of the year of hard, chilly dry.

Which is all to say he's absolutely charmed. Whenever he can pull himself from work he's walking now, which is... not that different from usual. But he's staying close as he can to the trees, collecting interesting colors and shapes of leaf like he has the rock specimens he so carefully curates to the delight of only himself. There's often one stuck behind his ear or in his ponytail or headscarf (once his hair is back to its usual black) if it's a particularly good one. He's never seen nature grow itself jewels like this.

There's definitely some surreptitious stepping on crunchy ones. And, if he's sure he's on his own, a few jumps into windblown piles. It's not just fall. Bodhi's feeling a bit better about a lot of things lately. The better part of a year in the relative quiet of the valley, horrible as it can be periodically, has paid off. He's almost remembered how to be himself again. And if being true to that self involves flirting with a certain someone a bit, well, it doesn't mean anything, right? It's not flirting if you say it's not! He even hums as he wanders sometimes, apparently having forgotten the rule against Rook singing. It's off key and monotonous, but he knows what tunes he's getting at, and he likes it.

Oh, and there's a non-zero amount of sneezing. Someone might need to explain allergies, along with autumn and Halloween.

Comments

Later October - House 39

[3ofswords]

"Gesundheit," Kira says, not even looking up as Bodhi walks back in through the back of the house. The door is louder after being reset, but it's there, letting in some of the chill with his wandering friend's return. The sneezing has been a thing, but not such a thing that he thinks Bodhi might be getting sick.

That would be Kira's purview. It hasn't happened yet: in fact, his gifts have gone and stayed for several days now, and he's been puttering around the house more than previous, trying to get what he can done before it crashes back down, worse than before.

Talking to Mark ensured someone at least would know when and why he lost his fucking mind, but it hadn't done much for the fact of it. Talking to Mark was never a solution, just--projecting the shadows on the cave, or whatever. Going through certain motions, making certain efforts. It could be enough to sort him for awhile. "Did you have fun?" An innocuous enough question, except for the eyes that lift up from the well-worn copy of War of the Worlds, like a parent waiting at the table with a newspaper. Except for the glint that was always in Kira's eye, if he was in any kind of positive, or at least non-lethargic mood.

There's a new leaf in Bodhi's hair. A particular oval of red that Kira had noted in a yard, on the path by the Hall.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi cuts himself off midway through a song he heard in a cantina years ago and throws Kira a perfectly innocent shrug as he steps inside. "I have no idea what a gesundheit is, but, um, besides that, sure?" His excess of cheerful energy doesn't abate, just redirects toward the counter, where he immediately begins messing with his tea things.

It's a little hard to pull his attention all the way back to Kira, but it's only polite, and even the simplified version of teamaking he does is good for that kind of grounding. Thoughts of swirling leaves and cool, slanty light and the pleasant ache in the wrists from smashing plant matter down to appropriate flatness don't really abate, but they do settle like tea leaves as he gets his tiny brazier lit. When he looks back at Kira he's more like his usual cautiously placid self. "Why, is--is something fun happening?" He has a ahard time imagining what that might be. Mystery feast? Those are nice.

[3ofswords]

"You will have to tell me," Kira answers, clearly well enough to go back to being inscrutable, not that his previous malaise made him--scrutable. He turns a page he isn't quite reading. Couldn't be reading, from as far away as he's holding it, his glasses still gathering dust in his bedside table. A lot of things gathering dust, but he isn't thinking about that. Same as he isn't picking up any of the books he gathered up, the day he went to apologize to Credence.

At first, he thought that's all it was. That Bodhi was going to check on their mutual friend, make sure the guy wasn't in Full Loner mode without his personal shadow gone.

Then his powers slammed back into place, and--he knows even if that's to do with the start, it isn't the whole. "You're always in such a good mood these days," he points out, eyes still skimming blurry lines. "I can't imagine what you're getting up to."

[onlyeverdoubted]

"I really like this... you wouldn't just, um, just call it weather, would You? With--with the trees like they are." A perfectly acceptable reason for a good mood. Cool and lovely, completely surprising, oddly gentle (if confusing) for something so outside his experience

And fall is nice, too.

"Of course, we could wake up with two suns in the middle of monsoon tomorrow, but, um, I'll take this while it lasts." It's an attitude he's gotten very good at adopting.

[3ofswords]

It does serve to distract Kira for the moment, but he isn't one to drop a subject overlong. Everything revolves in cycles, and he only lets a topic go in the knowledge that it will come up again later.

Usually when he makes it.

"It did come on pretty fast," he says, setting the book down and thinking now about the brief snow that fell, the crops still in the field, and no Tim to chop wood for either of the houses he's tending. Last winter, he'd been at the inn, now his responsibility is increased two hundred percent. "It's autumn, winter could be weeks away."

His teasing mood is subsumed in a frown, looking at their stove, their broken and reaffixed door. "Maybe we should move to the brick house I fixed up, just until spring. I can't keep up with both, and it's sturdier."

Then the gleam returns to his eyes, and he's climbing a slope back to the original topic: "It's closer to your friend's house, too."

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi's sense of geography considerably outpaces his sense of people, and his first response is honest. "Well, it's... it's not exactly a big town, I don't think anything in the village on this side is really far from anywhere..."

Then he catches Kira's look when he glances away from the kettle. He's not sure what it means, but he suspects he won't like it. He's not opposed to teasing, rarely as he can keep up with it, but teasing from someone with weird, unpredictable force powers is a lot harder to roll with than a pilot across the table insulting his beard. "What?"

[3ofswords]

"Your friend," he repeats, dropping the words mildly between them, the smile tugging but not spreading his lips. There's plenty to tease Bodhi about, but only so many topics that seem--allowable, even in Kira's questionable moral structure. Mean is certainly a thing he can and will be, but--not to Bodhi. Not ever to Bodhi, especially after reaping the consequences of his lapse with Credence.

He doesn't want to think about Credence at all. Tim should be the deeper blow--is a blow, in a way Kira never wanted him to be, but. Lexington. Tim is gone to Lexington, where he has a mother and a job. Credence he puts in the box with Casey, where he doesn't think about either, or where they might be, because the options are too terrible to live with.

Teasing Bodhi is infinitely better. "The one who makes all that paper; you always come home in such an interesting mood."

[chirrutsluck]

"What did you do?"

Baze's response to Bodhi's little trick is not the same as Bodhi's response to Baze's trick. He's frowning in confusion at him, instead, trying to work out not only how but why. That is an incredibly vibrant shade for someone's hair.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi's pretty calm about it. Strange, sure, but it's not even inconvenient, let alone a real problem. Just weird. "I... honestly, not sure when it started, since I, well, I didn't go by a mirror... for a bit. But. For sheer strangeness without a source? Probably happened the same time I thought I saw a koyo melon and it disappeared."

[chirrutsluck]

Baze frowns. " ... like when it rained on me that one day last week," he says after a moment. "I saw a melon too, but it also disappeared." So it really is someone-- their captors, obviously-- playing childish tricks on them. "Yours is much less of an inconvenience than mine."

[onlyeverdoubted]

"I did wonder about that. Maybe you didn't respond like they wanted." Baze was just grumpy and taciturn about... different things than usual. "I wonder if I'm responding like they wanted," he adds thoughtfully. How would he know what's fun to watch him do? He seems terribly boring to himself.

[chirrutsluck]

"Or it could be random," Baze snorts, not buying that. "I doubt either of us picked up a melon in different ways." Besides, if their captors really wanted to punish him for being grumpy and taciturn, bringing Chirrut here was really not the way to do it. Rainclouds that last until sunset don't really count as more than an annoyance, and hardly a deterrent.

[onlyeverdoubted]

He's not going to argue. Random works, too. "I think the... the bait might have been specific, though. I haven't seen anything that looks like a koyo melon here before that. Didn't, um, I didn't think about it at the time, but, well."

Trick, 10-12

[theintercessor]

As far as seeing things that aren't there, putting shockingly purple hair on Bodhi's head is both the most extreme and innocuous split of reality that Jude's experienced yet. It's a welcome break from the spitting shadows that sit on his chest in the dark, or the maggots that make everything he picks up a possible projectile, or even just the rotten smell of sulfur and old fruit.

Bodhi's mood, when the bright color draws Jude close enough to see who it belongs to, is so light that he buries any small desire to mention it. It's too stupid a thing to be real, and not worth upsetting either of them over.

"I uh, finished that picture of the dog," he says, eyes flicking back down to the roll of paper in his hands, refusing to linger upward. The embarrassment of the clearly false vision compounds with the embarrassment of having an excuse to come see Bodhi, and further with the fact of standing on the man's porch for the first time.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi's distracted from the hair situation (which, all things considered, is barely even an annoyance) by wondering if he should hurry to the door once he realizes who's outside or if he should walk at his normal speed, and then what his normal speed actually is, and if maybe it'd be better to go slower. He forgets to put down the broom, too, having decided the sneezing is probably a dust thing and embarked on a bit of a tidying spree. At least he's not conscious about being a little dusty or wearing his threadbare scrubs to clean in. It's not like he's ever much to look at in the first place.

The blunt opening, so like Jude, makes him grin--open, crooked, and toothy, a look that's been as absent as laughing since he got here but has begun to surface from time to time lately. He gets to see another picture, and probably one Jude worked on particularly, if he's taking the time to hand deliver. "Can I see?" Probably should have started with an invitation to come in.

[theintercessor]

Bodhi stands rather less than more at his height, so that it's easier to lift his gaze and hope the spider building a web in the beams above them is real enough to explain his divided attention. Otherwise he's the idiot staring at the porch overhang like he's divining the weather through it, because he's afraid to be struck dumb by a smile.

Struck-dumb is his default state, most of the time. The combination of hair, slipping grasp on reality, and Bodhi's open enthusiasm is just making it worse. He doesn't fumble the drawing, because he hardly lets himself move at all, eventually dropping his gaze back to (purple hair) Bodhi's expectant look, then slightly past his shoulder (purple hair), then down at the broom in his hands.

"Trade," he says, one hand closing around the handle well enough below Bodhi's grasp, and the other tapping the edge of the roll onto that hand. "Thanks for bringing her around to sketch." He still has pages of her in the rapidly filling sketchbook, references for his finished piece.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Jude's care with not getting too close to him doesn't go unnoticed. Despite a general sense of shame and foolishness at needing to be treated like a fancy antique (a sense that's always there and just spikes a little in the moment), he can still be grateful. And a bit charmed. It's easier to relax knowing Jude will pay attention, sure, but... That means Jude is paying attention to him. At all. In particular, even.

He's such a complete dipshit when he's.

Bodhi snaps the thought off so firmly it feels like a complete sentence.

"You can just set it down on the porch," he says, and immediately feels like he wasted a good moment talking about broom storage. Eager to get on with the reveal, he carefully unrolls the picture.

[theintercessor]

At first he isn't sure Bodhi means the broom or the picture, until their mild burdens swap hands and he's left with the broom. Instead of laying it or leaning it in any one direction, Jude tucks it up to his side, hands clasping over the top of the handle and his weight bending the head against the floor. Setting his chin on his knuckles, he watches Bodhi's inspection of the drawing with muted interest.

He had the dog to practice, but the crow--something he's aware of, but never spent much time with--he had to guess. Sketch the crows around his yard and guess at the hang of its bad wing. The drawing itself is all shadow and negative space, wearing out erasers and a strip of towel to create the curled form of Aurora in the center of the page, the crow sitting atop the curl of her body, and grassy weeds breaking up the pair at the foreground then extending the silhouette behind. There's a burst of a flower caught in sun, almost entirely devoid of shadow, over Aurora's bright eye, and a similarly white moth sitting on the crow's lame wing.

"She's not exactly Balto, so I figured it didn't have to be something--heroic, or anything."

[onlyeverdoubted]

I don't know what Balto is is a phrase he doesn't bother with finding a moment to speak. They both know at this point that he's going to miss things, and Jude might, too, though Bodhi's aware his own cultural markers are very rare here and usually keeps a tighter lid on them.

But he doesn't really feel like talking. Too busy looking. He's demonstrated plenty of times now the way he can get lost in one of Jude's pictures, eyes following small details and then jumping to the whole effect and back again, taking a brief rest on the texture of the paper, examining the weight of each line and the path of each curve. He gets completely lost easily, and that was in pictures that weren't made... He isn't sure it'd be right to say made for him, but Kira doesn't know Jude and the dog doesn't care, so it might as well be. Maybe. This one's especially good, and it's a gift on purpose, not a peculiar, un-looked-for offer.

He leaves Jude standing too long before he remembers that he exists in a time and place, no matter how long he could do this if he were alone. "Can... do you mind if I hang it up?" He doesn't think to compliment verbally, or not now. He just looks eager and delighted and like he can barely take his eyes off the page.

Tricks

[71st_victor]

Johanna's had that shade of hair before. She thinks it had been two years after her victory tour when the Capitol decided that she needed a new hair color for every single district that she stopped in. Her hair had been fried by the end. For the Quarter Quell, she'd dyed hers a darker shade, like blood drying, but she has to admit that it doesn't really look like it suits Bodhi the way she'd pulled it off.

Then again, she did have much better stylists. "If you were planning on making drastic hair changes, I'm thinking you should have done a trial run," she deadpans, arching her brow at him. "Where'd you get the supplies?"

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi snorts. "If I'd picked I'd have gone with something a little more... Muted. Going to say muted." He's never dyed his hair. It's very dark, so he'd have had to bleach first, and it'd be a lot of trouble for an effect he didn't especially care for. "No, it just happened. So, um, one of the odder... But not all that dangerous, right? So I don't really mind if they stick to things like this instead of, well, of shaking the ground under us."

[71st_victor]

She studies the hair he's got and wonders what could even be muted that ends up looking good. "Electric blue," she says, because that's the best thing she can see him in, if she's honest, but also because it would be fun. Reaching out, she rubs her fingers through some of the strands like it's a blade of grass, squinting at it when nothing rubs off.

"I would've been more impressed if there was some dye involved," she says, a little put off because she's wanting that herself, after so long with the same hair. Honestly, it's getting so long that she's at the point of wanting to sheer it. "Come on, Bodhi," she encourages. "Let me do something with it."

[onlyeverdoubted]

He's still not used to the way she gets in his space, and his good mood isn't enough to keep his reaction subdued. He jerks back and then takes a firm step away from her. Maybe if she'd asked before she touched... But no, that would have been a bad idea. The most he's been able to handle is brief contact in the course of doing some specific task, being handed a book or helping prop up a screen. No way something prolonged and touchy would go well. "No." And, because he doesn't want to just seem mean (never mind that she's the one who keeps grabbing at him), he adds, "Electric anything isn't really what I was thinking."

[71st_victor]

Johanna doesn't even care a lick for the way he steps back, giving him a look that says she's tired and impatient with him and he's always so annoying when he's like that, but at the same time, it's not like she cares that much either.

"That's why you're boring, Bodhi," she tells him, flatly. She eyes the hair and gives a mild sound. "Come on. I've got some tree ash I can rub into it if you want to get it back to a darker shade. Grey, at least," she offers.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"I'm boring for a lot of reasons. Don't touch my hair." This is why he knows better than to pursue any... stupid thoughts he might have considered having about someone lately. He likes Johanna. He even appreciates her approach to teasing. But get her hands anywhere near him, any sense of being grabbed at, and he's one inch from miserable panic. Right now his spine's holding. He's even glaring. But it could break easily.