Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

[strikefirster]

Who: Johnny, Daniel, Ortus, Gideon Nav's Exquisite Corpse, Paul, Kaworu, Deku, Harrow, Maybe more?
What: Kidnapping, Forced Adoption, Getting these kids away from the Emperor
When: Shortly after boatgate
Where: The Bone House and Cobra Kai

Content Warnings: Probably references to Murder, Manipulation, Johnny Lawrence.

Prompts and Mingle will be in the comments.

Comments

[noniad]

[Ortus has been more ill-treated for far longer by those more dear to him than Augustine. It has been little obstacle to his affections for them. It poses little obstacle to his consideration of Augustine, whatever discomfort has arisen at the Saint's overfamiliarity and innuendo.

There is more than one way to construct a barrier between oneself and the world. Ortus attempts to imagine the Saint as a child, all those thousands of years ago, and finds that he may not, because the image that comes to him of a child is one that is small and knobby kneed and skull-painted, with wide eyes of indeterminate color and a muss of pale hair.

The gift of translation in this world smooths the edges of the foreign words, this language that the Saint once spoke, a language as long dead as that imagined child, and Ortus comprehends.

He thinks that over a myriad, one must say goodbye many times, and always knowing that one such time will be the last.]

Au revoir.

[He echoes the words with utmost gravity, which ought to be unsuited to their lightness, but he finds a way to make them suit. He did not aspire to the title of bone skald unready for it.]

I will see to the well-being of my charges, in the meanwhile. [Not quite what Augustine has said; not quite implied, but perhaps meant.] May you find your own such duty not so onerous.

[butnotyet]

[ Funny, really, given what will happen in a mere three days, regarding Duty, and (uncapitalized) duties becoming less onerous — but neither of these two are those who might read the future, to know what is yet to come; Augustine knows only what he intends, and the likelihood of the cost he will bear as a result.

No use crying over milk that not only hasn't been spilt yet, but hasn't even formed in the cow, however. ]

Small enough chance of that, I fear, [ light-heartedly cheerful as his tone may appear, ] but I'm certainly not opposed to being proven wrong in the matter.

Do let me know, if anyone finds they've left something behind by mistake — although you do appear generally quite well-equipped in the detail-orientation department, amidst the lot of you — and I'll have Alfred drop it by.

And otherwise, well... I do hope that poetry reading will be soon, my young friend. You've certainly got enough work produced and polished to carry it off; you'll just have to whittle down your selection to be an appropriate length to allow for questions and answers, I suspect.

«Or for signings,» [ Alfred interjects. ]

[noniad]

[ A brief absurdity: Ortus wonders if this is what the fabled tales of worried parents sending their cherished offspring off to their first Cohort rotation are all about, and if he should expect to find lemon candies and a fresh change of socks tucked somewhere in the box that Augustine has handed over. It's not an unwelcome thought, but it is a sad one.

He does not care for God's loneliness in his emptied nest. He finds he cares, with the ache of a bruise, for Patience's.

Perhaps he will drop something inside of his own. A pen, or a strand of polished knucklebone, or a few scraps of notation. Another reason to lure the Saint, or at least his cavalier, out of this place. ]

Perhaps I shall provide a brief background to the audience to avert some of the more common questions about bones. [ He resists the urge to place a hand on Augustine's shoulder, but only just. ] To leave more - space for 'signings'.

[ He is struck by the terrible and touching knowledge that there will be those who will insist on such a thing. ]

Do not be a stranger.

[ That is how people say goodbye in stories. Ortus nods to them both in turn, necromancer and cavalier, Saint and spirit, Augustine and Alfred, before he turns away, making his way to the truck being loaded now with the young alongside their belongings. ]