Welcome to Gaia! ::

After arranging the pillows around him for maximum pain relief and comfort, Hybris had proceeded to lounge beautifully and without much purpose. Eyes closed, he enjoyed the sound of the small brook running through his island, the slide of fingers from page to page, and most of all, the sound of Eles trying out turns of phrase. Bringing them out to peer at from different angles and train his mind and mouth to work in tandem and harness them. Make them his, for the first time or once more.

Blinking his eyes open, he turned to give Eles a sympathetic look and took a slow drink of wine. The tastes of his past made nothing very simple for him now, Cummings writing wasn’t exactly the most natural for someone to learn off of. Though he suited Eles to a near painful degree, so far be it from Hybris to deny him such a pleasant struggle.

“Manunkind,” Hybris repeated with a nod, saying the word as casually natural as if it were laundry, or cornerstore. “Manunkind,” and here it turned scathing. “Manunkind,” and finally with a soft despair.

“All words are real as long as you’ve decided what they mean to you.” Another sip of wine and he slid his bare feet to burrow into the soft roll of a messy blanket. “It’s one of my parents’ favorites; they hate the way time is always going forward, instead of making a choice and settling down to exist beautifully within our means.”

“Schrödinger,” Hybris spoke aloud. Then, slowly and clearly, voice wrapping neatly around each syllable, repeated, “Schrödinger.”

After, he took time to mull over Eles’s own words, and decided that the boy simply liked things to be a little more complicated, for himself and others. Or maybe a lot more complicated, seeking out puzzles in both poems and people. Teasing out something more than a shallow passing by wherever he could. It had to make his situation so ******** frustrating, to be a puzzle himself, but until he solves it, cursed to be a shallow existence. Except where he clawed out and bit in his own layers, his own meaning in lieu of the years of lifetime others have passively accumulated.

“Hmmm, Cumming’s is playful like that I suppose. Always infusing a certain otherness to make the mind still or sway.”

There was a shudder of quiet laughter over his parents, the stabbing almost gentle this time, “They're going to call me on my birthday and I’ll be telling them about you.” If only because it’ll be interesting to see if they react exactly as expected or maybe throw in a few little twists and wrenches. “They likely know some things anyway.” Updates from the staff weren’t frequent enough to be considered spying, but they did occur.

What did it ******** feel like, how do you think it ******** feels like?

“It hurts! Very badly!” Dropping his head back to stare at the top of the tent, he relented after a few, steady breaths. “It’s shocking. The sound of it almost more than that initial burst of pain. I’d never heard anything inside me breaking before. Then they were transformed into blades, heated and at turns fast and slow in punishing me for…everything. Every little thing.”

Lifting his head back up, the look he gave Eles was both fond and accusing, “And I think of you with every breath I manage to endure.”

“Just don’t hurt the face,” or burn the hair again, “...and they’ll be fine.” A considering pause before adding, “They’ve pretty much given up on this house anyway.” Otherwise they’d both likely be evicted.

Hybris watched his judge, jury, and executioner wriggle over to peer up at him in a manner that was rather cute for someone who so calmly wrote his name across Malory’s ribs only a few days prior. This question was much more reasonable. Even if the answer wasn’t.

“Resent isn’t the word for it.” If he resented anybody, it’d be himself. For offering it in the first place, for being a playful idiot where Eles was serious. In not being able to see the nature and depth of the other’s care. In being so immediately, even desperately willing to drown in it than be without it. “Maybe a little hate? No…not that either.” That bright, and searingly hot edge of emotion was probably just another sort of love, just turned on its side and strange for it.

Well, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like this was a role he was trying to fill. It wasn’t like he needed, or ever wanted, to truly understand his own emotions.

His stomach jumped a little at the contact, but he managed not to flinch away. “It depends. Less when I spend time like this. And there’s items that can heal me faster. People with magic as well.” He lifted a shoulder in a lazy shrug, “A couple weeks at most.” Maybe more consider their mutual lack of reserve when it came to avoiding strenuous activity. “The dumpster man is on my timeline, not his. Unless he decides to try and find me first…”

Hybris’s eyes narrowed in consideration. The man on the other side of the phone had sounded unstable and incredibly distressed, while trying to reign himself in. That wasn’t a calm and calculating head to contend against. But he couldn’t dismiss the animal instincts of the desperate. And Hybris was beginning to get a feel for that desperation, just a taste in comparison, but it was enough to raise a bit of concern.

Which, of course, was not enough to keep him from feeding into it via the ever changing phone numbers left on the sides of burnt out dumpsters.

“Starseeds?” Hybris hummed in thought, eventually admitting, “I haven’t tried any, but I suppose that energy would have to do…something.” Heal a bone, bring the dead back to life, explode him into pieces small enough for Eles to carry in his pocket. His boy seemed rather interested in them, ever since confirming their existence. It was very likely that Eles’s starseed was the only solid, tangible thing left of his former existence. It was to be hoped that he would be motivated to be more careful with it due to that fact, rather than fearlessly reckless; and Hybris hoped for that in the same way most people hoped for world peace. It’d be nice and it was so unlikely as to seem impossible.

Instead he seemed more concerned for Hybris, and oh did he just wallow in that care. Even the hint of restriction in those words felt sweet as they coiled around him.

“No, I think it’d just add another inch of crazy to his search, and another target.” Hybris sighed. “I do actually want to help him a little, though really, I just want to compare notes with a youma.” The whiny complaint was more emphatic for this than the pain of his ribs. “He’s the one who made it into some kind of…paranoid conflict.” And this was resentment. Even though Hybris was grinning a little too happily for it. Couldn’t help but feel a little excited to see where things went with the man.

“I wouldn’t give you over to him even if I knew you were Faustite.” It was said with almost thoughtless certainty. Because he already hadn’t and had no intention to. “I don’t know if he’s trustworthy or safe, and if you don’t have Faustite’s memories, wouldn’t that just make you a constant target for Faustite’s enemies?” He tsked and then went on in a fussy tone, “You can only go if you want to, and then you still have to come back.”

A pause, “Try shrub-ding-er first. Simplify it into more common neighbor sounds.”

“Yes, the one made of fireflies. I have a feeling its magic has more technical requirements than mine, but that allows for much fewer limits as it gains greater skill.” Hybris watched as Eles manhandled him into a more comfortable position to hold onto, only giving a small, soft grunt at yet another little stab. No, hate truly wasn’t the right emotion for this.

He snorted at the concern for the dogs and silently accepted the unspoken agreement that Eles would come back. Of the two of them, Hybris was the only one who knew, beyond doubt, that Eles would choose to leave. And accepted it. To a point.

“I don’t think it will, though if it wants my energy, I won’t mind giving it.” Sitting up to rest on his elbow, Hybris took the resulting pain in steady, even breaths. “I’d like…to be friends with it. Or at least take it to a movie. One that would be good for learning from.”

His voice was wistful as he spoke, conjuring up a soft notion of friendship with someone very like and entirely unlike himself. Something both magical yet still a sort of peer in regards to his civilian passion for acting, for shedding his own story and skin to take on that of others. “It’s not important, it’d just be nice.”

“They don't come over unless I invite them.” A clear line he'd always drawn with friends and classmates. They can come, but only when called. And this summer he hadn't felt the need to throw any of his own parties, or text inciting photos with the short and clear demand of Come over. Thinking on it briefly, Hybris then chose not to think on it at all.

The struggles of befriending a youma has Hybris wanting to roll around in the blankets and pillows in a full, childish tantrum. Out of respect for the healing process and the knowledge that he'd likely strain it in other ways soon enough, Hybris limited himself to a sulky, “I think this one can be different. Being able to talk with it means it doesn't all have to come down to instinct.”

Thinking for a moment, Hybris belatedly realized that Eles had good reason for a less than enthusiastic attitude toward the youma. “Are you mad at it? For attacking you before?”

Obviously he wasn't scared of it. Eles still wasn't scared of anything at all as far as they knew.

Hybris could sense the boy turning slightly off kilter. Was it because he was thinking too personally about that youma? Which was, of course, his own youma. He didn’t know how that bond exactly worked, or if it had remained through whatever process of rebirth Eles had undergone. Hybris wasn’t even sure it had recognized Eles at that party, just that it seemed very possible, and was worth feeling out once he got the creature’s time and attention in person once more. Hopefully he could meet with it alone, without someone’s seething, grieving lover watching on within hearing distance.

What would you do to it, if you could do anything you wanted, to get back at it?

The thought played across Hybris’s tongue, but ultimately slid back down his throat, waiting for the next time to crawl back out and haunt his boy with a past not nearly as lost as he sometimes liked to mourn.

Instead, he nudged at the book with his foot, “There’s a stageplay of this one. Goes to s**t very fast if the actors can’t carry out a compelling monologue.”

Thinking about his future days of forced repose, Hybris asked, “Do you want to go to one? A stage production?” Besides his own general interest, the thought of dragging Eles out on something akin to a fancy date felt extremely appealing.

He nudged the book with his foot again.

Eles agrees.

Writ in black marker and floating forever up into the sky as far as Hybris was concerned.