[Ortus can readily picture Sayo curled up in library stacks that suspiciously resemble those of the Ninth, her fingers tracing the words of friends who would never know of her existence. It is an image that conjures up a soft ache of empathy, and he is glad she cannot make out his face well from the angle the roof allows.]
It is difficult to find oneself surrounded by those who do not appreciate the art of storytelling as you do.
[A touch dry, with a trace of contempt for those who fail to grasp the pleasures of a well told tale, but still with a note of sympathy.]
As I am certain will shock you [a moment's pause, to allow her to brace herself as needed] I, too, spent much time reading alone in my youth. Even more so in my adulthood, when not otherwise preoccupied by my duties.
I often found the characters of those tales...easier to understand than the people I lived alongside, however complex they may have been.
There was... one person, [Sayo admits, likewise grateful that Ortus can't see the volatile admixture of soft adoration, utter contempt, and soul-crushing guilty that funnels into her wan smile, although by the sudden droop of her shoulders he may be able to detect a hint of it anyways.] Kumasawa. She was the one who introduced me to mysteries in the first place. But she was way older than me, and-
[A frustrated huff.] Doesn't matter anyways. She joked about it all the time, but she couldn't sneak into Gospel House and read with me when I really needed the company. So I found, er. Other outlets.
["Other outlets?" pipes up a once-forgotten voice in the back of her mind. "Do you not even have the decency to name-drop me, Riiche? Good grief..."]
A lot like you, I suppose. Seeing their story and trying to place myself in a similar kind of narrative made it easier to... well, not to understand life. Being a breathing human being was a lot more complex than that, no matter how much I tried to reduce it to a tale I was writing. But it made it easier to pretend to understand, at least.
[Ortus wouldn't need to see the slump to understand at least part of her feelings. He cannot help but think of his mother, which is something he strives not to do in the company of others. It is too burdensome a grief to lay at the feet of someone with enough of her own troubles; it is enough that her memory aids his comprehension.]
I have often contemplated the extent to which one must consider one's own life a story. [He muses, tipping his head back further to regard the tiny lights above, with only a faint queasy twist at the vastness they are set in.] Too much, and as you say, the true complexity of living is elided from one's understanding...too little, and one is adrift, without meaning or motive beyond the impulses of the moment. I do not believe the balance ever perfectly struck, save for rare exceptions.
If you ever find yourself nearby when it rains, I would not begrudge your company. Although I should seek to furnish my dwelling with another chair, at the very least.
Stories are lenses that we look at our lives through. We just need to be careful not to forget that we still exist when we're not staring through them.
[It's refreshing, having an intellectual-
Whatever train of thought that was leaving the station abruptly crashes when Ortus mentions furniture. Sayo can't help it, she throws her head back and lets out a witchy cackle entirely disproportionate with the hilarity of the musing. She eventually calms herself down after an uncomfortably long time, wheezing and wiping a tear from her eye.]
S... sorry. Something you said was just very funny to me, and to me only.
[It is an uncomfortably long time. Ortus is accustomed to uncomfortably long times, particularly those spent in waiting for some other soul to wend their way through what the Ninth, in its limited delicacy of allusion, would call a 'fit', and what Ortus has long preferred to think of as a 'spell'. There is a distinction between them that is fine, but one that matters to him.]
I have heard that humor shared is humor multiplied [he says, in the ponderous tones of someone who definitely understands humor] if you would care to share the joke. Then again, I have also heard that in the explaining, much of comedy is lost.
[Or: she can tell him, or she can not. He is untroubled by either answer, as he was untroubled by the wait. What he does make note of is the somehow stretched quality of her laugh, as if it strains against itself in some way he cannot define or discern.]
...I don't think anyone else would find it funny. Especially not you.
[She pauses, considering how much to tell Ortus.
He's seen enough of her lies, worked his way close enough to the heart of the story, to earn some truth freely given, as mortifying as exposing it still felt.
Sayo sighs, and he shoulders slump.]
"Furniture." That's what I called myself for a long time. In service to other people. Never seen, never heard, only there when needed. Part of the background.
This conversation has just... brushed up against enough memories for its mere mention in this context to be hysterically funny to me, apparently.
[Ah, Ortus thinks, and perhaps there is mercy in the universe after all, for he does not voice it. He observes her from his spot on the ground in silence, and then, with caution deliberation, pulls his hands from his sleeves so that he may ascend the ladder. He does not disembark it to alight on the roof when he reaches its apex, but merely clings to it, studiously avoiding a downward glance in favor of regarding her levelly with eyes that may as well be purest Drearburh black under starlight.]
I have also heard it said that laughter may be a salve for sorrow. [Nonjudgmental, but perhaps weighted with a certain understanding.] As a child, I would imagine myself a ball of tallow. Malleable, but inert, possessed of no higher feelings.
Perhaps I ought to have imagined myself as furniture. [He pauses, thinking, in evident seriousness.] If so, I should have liked to be a settee. A well-stuffed one.
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deercountry2022-04-13 04:55 pm
no subject
It is difficult to find oneself surrounded by those who do not appreciate the art of storytelling as you do.
[A touch dry, with a trace of contempt for those who fail to grasp the pleasures of a well told tale, but still with a note of sympathy.]
As I am certain will shock you [a moment's pause, to allow her to brace herself as needed] I, too, spent much time reading alone in my youth. Even more so in my adulthood, when not otherwise preoccupied by my duties.
I often found the characters of those tales...easier to understand than the people I lived alongside, however complex they may have been.
no subject
[A frustrated huff.] Doesn't matter anyways. She joked about it all the time, but she couldn't sneak into Gospel House and read with me when I really needed the company. So I found, er. Other outlets.
["Other outlets?" pipes up a once-forgotten voice in the back of her mind. "Do you not even have the decency to name-drop me, Riiche? Good grief..."]
A lot like you, I suppose. Seeing their story and trying to place myself in a similar kind of narrative made it easier to... well, not to understand life. Being a breathing human being was a lot more complex than that, no matter how much I tried to reduce it to a tale I was writing. But it made it easier to pretend to understand, at least.
no subject
I have often contemplated the extent to which one must consider one's own life a story. [He muses, tipping his head back further to regard the tiny lights above, with only a faint queasy twist at the vastness they are set in.] Too much, and as you say, the true complexity of living is elided from one's understanding...too little, and one is adrift, without meaning or motive beyond the impulses of the moment. I do not believe the balance ever perfectly struck, save for rare exceptions.
If you ever find yourself nearby when it rains, I would not begrudge your company. Although I should seek to furnish my dwelling with another chair, at the very least.
no subject
[It's refreshing, having an intellectual-
Whatever train of thought that was leaving the station abruptly crashes when Ortus mentions furniture. Sayo can't help it, she throws her head back and lets out a witchy cackle entirely disproportionate with the hilarity of the musing. She eventually calms herself down after an uncomfortably long time, wheezing and wiping a tear from her eye.]
S... sorry. Something you said was just very funny to me, and to me only.
no subject
I have heard that humor shared is humor multiplied [he says, in the ponderous tones of someone who definitely understands humor] if you would care to share the joke. Then again, I have also heard that in the explaining, much of comedy is lost.
[Or: she can tell him, or she can not. He is untroubled by either answer, as he was untroubled by the wait. What he does make note of is the somehow stretched quality of her laugh, as if it strains against itself in some way he cannot define or discern.]
no subject
[She pauses, considering how much to tell Ortus.
He's seen enough of her lies, worked his way close enough to the heart of the story, to earn some truth freely given, as mortifying as exposing it still felt.
Sayo sighs, and he shoulders slump.]
"Furniture." That's what I called myself for a long time. In service to other people. Never seen, never heard, only there when needed. Part of the background.
This conversation has just... brushed up against enough memories for its mere mention in this context to be hysterically funny to me, apparently.
no subject
I have also heard it said that laughter may be a salve for sorrow. [Nonjudgmental, but perhaps weighted with a certain understanding.] As a child, I would imagine myself a ball of tallow. Malleable, but inert, possessed of no higher feelings.
Perhaps I ought to have imagined myself as furniture. [He pauses, thinking, in evident seriousness.] If so, I should have liked to be a settee. A well-stuffed one.