sixthiterationlogs | The thing I wanted most was never meant to be

It wasn't strange to see Casey at a meal and not a snatch of him until he came up to bed. When the fact of the lightning and the fact of that made him cagey, Kira would rub the wooden die left in his pocket, picture the shape of him, and take the lack of feeling from it as a good sign.

Lately it was all the harder for their paths to cross: Casey used daylight to find work for his hands, moving through the homes and buildings to dismantle broken walls and furniture, working on hutches behind the inn itself. Kira found himself skirting the edges, walking paths that didn't carry Ren's footprints for all he wanted them to. One hand cupped the deck of cards in his left pocket; the other sat on the hilt of the knife in his right. Sometimes he needed the deck to find his way back through the trees, sometimes he used the knife to cut a path of markers in rough bark.

It wasn't any help to anyone, really, but it helped to clear his head and put some strength back in his legs, his lungs burning less in the dry air than they had when he'd arrived, trying to walk the length of the river.

When the sun started to go down, and the possibility of needing the knife grew too great, he would ask for the direction of home, and come out of the trees at Ren's grave often enough to make a landmark of it. North to the path that cut by the ruined house, follow to the fountain. When he stopped feeling clean and clear, able to focus on his own emotions--he knew he was back, and it's time to check in on some of the drops in the village's ocean of humanity.

The first, and usually last, was finally across the way from him, hunching over something on his lap and playing some wheezy blues tune that, apparently, survived the apocalypse.

It wasn't a guitar, and Ty had never worn anything so ratty as that coat, but Kira still took a deep breath before he crossed the path to the inn. Still followed his gaze up to the sky, the sight of Casey's rags setting his own carefully maintained shirt itching all over his skin. If he wasn't looking at him, it was easier to imagine someone else. It wasn't the right person, if he wanted distance, if he wanted to forget--but that wasn't the point. For a minute, there was a ghost of a man sitting on a half-wall by the park, making music for no sake but his own, a miracle of a sky overhead and Kira aching just to hear it one more time.

Then movement on the steps drew his attention back, and he raised a brow, looking down at the head lifting from Casey's lap to sniff the air. "Is that a puppy."

Edited 2017-02-19 21:57 (UTC)

Casey had not pursued Kira's more fleeting presence. The man had much to deal with, and for Casey it seemed better to let him find his own ways to deal with it. He more or less knew where to find Casey if he felt he wanted the company.

When Kira returned to the inn, Casey felt that increasingly familiar glimmer of relief to see he was still alive and still there. It was easy to imagine Kira vanishing into the woods, when Casey had been doing so all his life. Or falling to someone not as confusingly friendly as so much of the village was.

"It is." He shifted to let her move to her comfort, and the little black ball of fur stretched with a wide mouthed yawn between his legs. She was small and new, and in his mind far more fragile than anything he had ever had the need to provide some form of care for.

She wasn't Dog, and he had never thought of the dog as 'his', either. The dog had chosen to follow him. This puppy had chosen nothing. He had lifted her from a box with a name on it. Five familiar letters that had been given to him by the man across from him now.

"She's quiet." The words carry a touch of something like fondness. Quiet in anything was a trait that was highly valued in his world, especially by Casey. The Dog had been quiet, other than the ever present voice that came with it. If she stayed quiet, a ghost at his side like dog had, her chance of surviving increased.

"That's good," though he had no intention of refusing the dog if it wasn't. Casey had spent enough time searching the village when he arrived--even if Kira insisted on a louder dog staying down by the fire at night, he knows Casey would only go sleep on the floor with it.

Turning away, he eased himself down beside Casey on the steps, resting his feet. He could have invited him inside with the dog, a chill deepening in the dark canyon, but he only sat himself against Casey's side for the warmth, laying an arm along their thighs to let the puppy inspect his hand. "She's just a baby," he added, "she's too tired to do anything, it looks like."

When he lifted his gaze back to the sky, the first patches of dark and stars showing behind the softly thundering clouds in weeks, he felt the cold of her nose, then her tongue gently between his fingers. "Did she come from a litter, or just--turn up in a crate?"

He wondered a bit at it, the nature of the boxes, the way Casey's hadn't seemed to hurt him any. Kira didn't think it was a lack of triggers in his ash-choked past.

"Another box." He pulls the card with his name on it out of his tattered coat, smoothing his thumb along the paper of it beneath the name Kira had given him.

"I've never seen one this small." Dog wasn't quite this young when they had met, though still an adolescent canine at the time. Casey follows Kira's gaze and then looks back at the dog sniffing at Kira's hand and nosing it with a lazy thump of her tail. She rolled onto her back in his arms, so trusting Casey wasn't sure how to deal with it. He would have to teach her caution around strangers, he thinks. Not Kira, but the other villagers, perhaps.

"Do you think she's sick?" There's an edge of concern to his voice. It was too early to grow attached to the small, furry creature in his arms. But the fact that she was a dog had started to spell his doom even before she had proven affectionate toward him. Still. He had never dealt with a puppy before, and her lazy, sleepy nature had him confused and concerned.

"What would be the point of giving you a sick dog?"

Not that he didn't think the place was cruel enough, to dangle a thing and yank it away. Sometimes Ren felt like proof of that, someone who felt stuck, and weakened, who had some semblance of the powers Kira possesses. That wasn't someone's design though, that was his own fault, for not spending the time, for not trying to talk to him sooner. They had both been happy to find other topics, other concerns, and avoid the deeply personal.

Maybe he ought to treat Casey as a second chance, another fleeting friend to hold onto as long as he could. After ten years of Ty, the idea of sinking that deep into even the concept of another person--it feels more like the apprehension and painful prick of a doctor's needle, filling a need in an unpleasant way.

That feels closer to what this is, the fear in the longing as they both stare at the dog. Replacing something, even a dog, after knowing it can be lost. Knowing it might happen over and over. "I think she's just a puppy," Kira assures him, shifting his hand to rub across the exposed fur of her belly. For a moment, he just inspects the lines of her, tilting her muzzle up to look at her dark face, lifting his hand to learn the shape of her ears. "Might be a shepherd, she'll get pretty big if that's the case."

"What is the point of any of them?"

Casey could think of a number of reasons the mystery boxes might hold a sick dog. He wan't yet of the impression that the boxes were meant to fuck with them, but they did seem a mixed bag. He had concerns, and most of them were his awareness of his own weakness toward animals, especially dogs. She seemed fine with both of them messing with her, pawing at Kira's hand but making no real protest besides a soft grunt of confusion.

"You think so?" He moves one of his hands so her large puppy paw rests on his palm, spreading his hand flat and bobbing it slightly to move her leg with his hand. She was soft, warm, and calm. He didn't know if the calm would stay. It had only been a couple hours since he found her, but she was sweet and according to the card, she was meant for him.

"A girl asked me what I was going to name her." Considering the times they had bumped into each other, he probably should know her name by now. He had only bothered to learn Kira's, and even then that had largely been a product of learning to write.

"She's yours, you should." He watches Casey play gently with the dog, the way she acquiesced to it as easily as Casey had settled under his own hands, the day he found him on the floor and dragged him upstairs for a bath and a compromise on a real bed. What did that make Casey, who he had named?

Letting go of her ear between his fingers, he smooths it back, petting back the soft fur on her brow and head. "If you pick one, I can help you write it on the card."

He's largely stopped writing things down for Casey, trying to guide him through making the motions himself. They'll stick better if he does. Kira could show him the letters in their combinations over and over, but they won't become words just from beating them against his eyes.

He had picked one almost immediately. The idea of it unsettled him at first. Both the notion of giving a name to anything, claiming it enough as his own to assign such a thing to it and claim responsibility. What did that say of his own opinions, though, of himself and the name given to him?

His gaze shifts almost wholly to the creature in his lap, and his fingers still on her fur. Hesitant though he was to allow himself to become attached to the small, presumably frail young canine, he was doomed to do exactly that. Something he was self aware of enough to feel concern over the idea of it.

"Aurora." He finally voices after a moment. The lights in the sky had been a recurring theme for him, and he had frequently been distracted by and called to them. For all his fears of them being sky fires, a warning of oncoming skyfall, or something else entirely, he had been drawn to the shifting colors in the same way he felt drawn to the tauntingly placed possibility of a canine filling the rest of the hole that had formed in his day to day life.

Kira wasn't Dog, and neither would she be, but they both - in different ways - seemed to be pieces fitting into and filling a vacant hole cut into his life by the separation from his one constant companion.

The sky above them has lost that glimmer of hope, replaced with heavy clouds, flashes of lightning lighting them from the inside. There are only patches of sky beyond, but he smiles all the same. "That's a good name."

Already shoulder to shoulder with Casey when he sits back, Kira sets his chin against the wool of his coat, winds up resting his cheek there as he looks down at the docile animal. The long walks returned one kind of energy to him and took another, leaving him with an empty feeling, a calm he hasn't managed since New York. Even there, he could climb up to the roof of his building some nights, stare out at the snow falling on the city, and if the night wasn't punctuated with gunfire, there was something like peace.

Retracting his hands to his own lap, he just sits, leaning into him, resting on the island of Casey's soft wonder for his hands on a real gift. "She can sleep on the bed," he offers, knowing Casey might exile himself to the floor or hammock to keep her close.

Casey half expects he'll wake up from any sleep he has at this point to find there was no dog, or she's decided to find someone else to shadow. Dog had chosen him out of necessity and familiarity, but there were 'good', dog-friendly people all over the village. She could easily find a different person to claim.

It was part of his hesitation to give her a name. She didn't belong to him. But holding her in his arms settled the nerves constantly vibrating through him, and put a warm feeling in his chest like the one in the pit of his stomach the rare times he ate a full share of his rations.

That would have to change. He would go back to splitting his rations with the canine, but that was only fair. It was always a part of the arrangement.

He doesn't respond exactly, to Kira's claim that it's a good name. His expression shifts subtly, and there's an upturn to the corner of his lips, his eyes on the canine. He's fucked. He's absolutely fucked himself further by holding her at all. But the invitation to the bed, to sleep with the warmth of two bodies and the knowledge that he could keep her safe by the both of them, is a welcome pull toward returning to the inn. The nights were still too cold for such a small, young thing as her anyway, and he couldn't keep her outside forever.

He shifts, ready to get to his feet, and glances over, bundling the canine up in his arms.

"She's safe in the inn?" He had not seen anyone try to eat any of the other dogs in the inn, but the concern had bee too deeply ingrained to dismiss entirely.

Kira can't imagine why she wouldn't be, and the small gas flame, the flicker of fear in Casey does nothing to elaborate. The dog calms and riles him both, makes him a warm, dark room, but a draft keeps guttering that light, stirring it back to life. Kira doesn't know how to phrase the yes, to make it stick.

When Casey shifts, Kira muffles a groan into his shoulder before sitting up of his own power, ready to go up to bed but not overjoyed to make the trip up to it. It was a bit of a trip just to get from Ren's grave back to the inn, and he'd only exited the trees there after wandering between them.

"She'll be fine," he promises, letting Casey up, watching Aurora rise in his arms with only a huff of breath. She seems used to him already, more than ready to be carried around. "Did you feed her yet?"

Casey moves the rest of the way to and through the door with only a shake of his head. He still hesitated to take food at any time but during the meals, but he did need to at least get water for the young dog in his arms.

He carries her to the kitchen, letting Kira follow at his own pace. He sets her in the sink while he looks for a bowl to get her some water with, and watches her try to drink straight from the faucet when he turns it on, the marvel of so much easily accessed water still not lost on him.

"I found her too late in the evening."

Glancing at the dog in the sink, Kira wonders if he'll have to teach Casey to bathe her as well, considering his own habits. She seems happy enough, though he has to wonder--where would she come from? Even without a human mind to comprehend being lifted from her life and set in theirs, she's solid, she's real, and she must have been bred somewhere before being placed in a box, left in a room.

He follows over to find the crumbling bread Kate has them make each day, unsure what dogs can and can't eat, aside from chocolate and chicken bones. "I can see what meat there is in the morning. Keep her from going hungry and she'll probably grow pretty quickly. I've never owned a dog before though, I'm not really sure what you do with them other than food and exercise and don't let her shit in our room."

Johanna sometimes wonders if she isn't surrounded by a bunch of morphlings in training, people who would happily drug themselves into a stupor if they just had the right tools at their disposal. She sees the boy from where he's lying against the riverbank, looking like he might not be awake, and at some point if the tide gets higher, he's going to be in trouble.

She could leave him there to die. If it were the Games, there would be a cannon that went off and she'd have one less person to compete with, but these people aren't her enemies. They're her allies, as much as she doesn't like them. It means that she sighs and abandons her log-hauling task, dumping bag of logs and axe a few feet away before wandering to the edge of the river to crouch down beside him, flicking him in the neck, just behind the earlobe.

"Hey," she says sharply. "You secretly a mermaid?"

He starts at the flick, defensively rolling over with his arms brought up to block an attack that doesn't come. The village has softened some of his reflexes and habits, but only enough that he can ignore the itch to disappear or the fear of sleeping where someone might find him.

He had thought the river would be far enough from the village to avoid the presence of other members of the camp coming along, but he forgot they had far more of a penchant for wandering than any he was used to. He blinks the sleep from his eyes, pulling himself into a seated position when she doesn't immediately attack and clearing his throat, a hand rubbing at one of his eyes.

"What's a Mermaid?" The word sounds vaguely familiar. He might have heard it in passing in the past.

"Stories," is all she says, remembering the innocent days of youth as she marveled over stories about mermaids and beasts, creatures that wandered the mountains and the forests, the kinds of things in your imagination that weren't so scary until the Capitol figured out a way to turn them into a muttation and then it's just a matter of time before they turn up somewhere in the Games. Glad that he's at least not in sudden risk of dying, she heads back a few steps to collect her things, not minding if the wood gets yanked, but overly protective of the axe.

"You know, there's probably better places for you to settle in," she says, mildly annoyed at having to even say this. "Ever considered a nice, sturdy tree branch?"

"Don't trust the trees." Where he came from, they were old, dead, and rotting on the inside. A tree would break or crumble if any pressure or weight was put on it. The river was a new wonder to him, and while the trees were as well, especially the evergreens, he trusted them even less than the water he had spent the first month watching for signs of sudden acidity or boiling temperatures.

He doesn't bother dusting the dirt off his tattered clothes once he's sitting properly. He just shifts to get one foot on the ground, giving him a better purchase if he needs to suddenly get up and running. People were far more dangerous to him than the outdoors. For all his own world would have suffocated, starved, or froze him in his sleep, this camp existed outside the same dangers he had grown used to. It had an entirely new set of survival rules to learn.

"I'd wake." He adds, gesturing to the water he assumes is her concern. Either his fingers would have woken him to the burning - a small sacrifice for the warning if the water had begun to change - or the rising waters would have woken him from his sleep with cold and wet.

He slept too lightly to drown without waking.

He doesn't ask who she is, but his eyes move to the axe and back to her, assessing, a healthy dose of discomfort, uncertainty, and readiness settling in his eyes and the creased lines of his brow.

She doesn't point out that he'd wake if it didn't flash flood on him, if it gave him the opportunity to actually get to do something before it took you away, but maybe she's just a little paranoid about things seeming too calm before the storm because she's been in too many situations before where things getting quiet just mean something worse is coming.

The look on his face makes her feel sorry for him for about a millisecond before her usual instincts kick in to defend herself first and worry about other people later. "Don't look at me like that, it's for the trees," she says, swinging her axe a little, not mentioning that it could very well be for people, if need be.

That little requirement hasn't arisen just yet, luckily.

It may be for the trees but it's a weapon more than he has. The odds aren't in his favor. He doesn't tense further, but that air of cautionary discomfort remains. People were not to be trusted, armed people even less so. She wasn't a threat to him until she became one, but anyone could do so at any moment. With or without warning. He smiles, thin and crooked, and gets to his feet slowly. His clothes are worn thin and ragged from use and abuse, despite being far younger in age than most of the villager's supplies at this point. The gloves on his hands fingerless and revealing darkened fingertips coated in ash and dirt on one hand, the other washed clean by the river for an off contrast.

"Do you need help carrying that back?" It's second nature for him, offering a hand and placating nature around strangers. The more useful he is, the better his chances usually are.

There's a stubborn part of her that would deny him, insist that she can do it herself, but Johanna is also very practical. If someone is offering to help and lighten her load, then she's more than willing to allow them to do it for her. "It wouldn't hurt," she drawls, like he's not doing her a favor so much as she's letting him help out. "Most of it's going to my place, but if you want, you can take some of the larger ones for you," she offers, because she figures they'll burn longer.

"What were you doing, anyway?" she asks, blunt and critical. "I'm pretty sure the river can't give you any kind of answers about this place."

Moana had heard the soft whispers of his song from inside of the inn. It tugged at her, the way that music was supposed to and she found herself wandering towards its source. She hadn’t heard any instruments since her arrival and as she made her way to the front of the inn she thought of all the amazing things that might be making the metallic sound. It was unlike anything she’s heard before.

She wasn’t all that surprised to see that the music was coming from the boy she’d met at the fountain. She’d seen him around a bit since but they hadn’t spoken in great depth. Her feet were bare leaving the inn but she did remember to bring her cloak. Moana stood out of his way, leaning her back against the front of the inn. "That sounds beautiful."

She smiled at him, her borrowed cloak wrapped tightly around her shoulders. At night she usually used it as a blanket since it fell well past her feet.

"How are you doing?" As she asked she noticed the small hint of dark fur in his lap. Her eyes brightened a bit and her smile shifted from a practiced grin to an affectionate stare. "Who is this?" Even curled in a little ball he looked very cute.

The slight familiarity of the voice gave him a moment's pause, and he looked up, the playing softly disappearing into a last somber note that drifted away. He wet his lips and curled an arm around the small, softly furred creature sleeping in his lap before he found the words to respond.

"Surviving well." Better than he had really anticipated. The camp was better off than he was used to his situation in life being. It wasn't a paradise, but it was pretty damn close to one for him. But at the indication of the dog in his lap, his expression softened and he looked down, rubbing one of her soft ears between his fingers.

"She's a good dog." She wasn't dog. Dog was long gone by now. But maybe this was a chance to start over. She had no voice yet, but he was sure she would develop one of her own, and he had missed that. The silence in his mind could be deafening.

Again he was reminded at how important names seemed to be to the people of this camp. He had allowed himself to be given one, perhaps he should giver her one as well. He remembered his own had come to being from an object close to him, and while he didn't have an object in mind for her, he did have a word nearly as beautiful floating around since he had learned the name for the sky lights. But if he named her, he would be claiming her as his, and he wasn't sure he could do that. Dog had chosen to follow him through the wastes. The bundle of fur in his lap didn't know enough about living yet to make any sort of decisions.

"Doesn't have a name. Not yet."

Moana's expression was soft as she lowered herself to sit next to Casey. She didn't reach towards the young pup however the desire was strong. She liked animals though it made her miss Pau and Heihei that much more.

"She looks it." Moana liked names but it was because names brought comfort. It was like holding onto something tangible. A name could carry power, love, fear and so many other emotions. There were few words that were as versatile and powerful as a name. Her dark eyes looked up at Casey.

"Are you thinking of a name?"

"Yeah." His response was soft as well, and dipped into contemplative. The puppy in his arms shifted to pay attention to the new human in her vicinity. Her head tilted and she sniffed the air, the movement of her tail as it began to wag just visible against the matching black of Casey's coat. She was quiet, and her curious eyes were almost as dark as the rest of her, a small, living shadow in the darkening world around them.

And yet the name he had in mind was anything but dark.

"Just not sure she's mine to name." He added as a roughly battered and dirt-caked hand slid through her clean, soft fur.

Moana finally reached forward to pet the small pup, pausing to make sure that it was something that she wanted. Her fingers brushed against the soft dark fur, scratching just behind the pups ear before pulling her hand away.

"Why don't you ask her? I think she'd like a name and if not, you don't have to give her one." Her dark eyes refocused on Casey with a smile.

"Seems fair, doesn't it?"

The thing I wanted most was never meant to be

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River

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@ INN

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