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 Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 11:35 pm
Furii chuckled and nodded. "Yea, even Kirke. The girl has a fascination with 'helping people.'" Furii paused, then laughed. "Unfortunately, I was never able to teach her to mind her own business." She rolled her eyes fondly, then fixed her eyes back on him again.
"So what did you do at your old Tribe?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 11:39 pm
"I killed people. Before they could kill me." His tone was nonchalant, but he watched her closely, looking for her reaction.
There was good reason Kalevi had never spoken about his old tribe before. Out of everyone in the tribe, maybe Furii could handle it. But even in her case, he wasn't sure.
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 11:47 pm
Furii raised an eyebrow and a flicker of a wicked grin appeared on her lips.
"Killed people," she repeated, mulling that over. So she was in the prescense of a murderer.
But he claimed it was in self-defense.
"Before they could kill you," she repeated, the smile widening slightly. "And you're still alive."
"Impressive." She eventually decided on saying, because that's what it was. Very impressive, and very...even-more-intruiging. And goddamn if she wasn't...impressed.
Amongst other emotions...
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 11:50 pm
He stared at her. He couldn't help it. Whatever he had been expecting, that, that was certainly not it.
All in all, it had gone far better than he had thought.
He simply shrugged at her calling it 'impressive'. "That's life. Kill or be killed."
Is, not was: while he had yet to find another fox who was (actively) trying to kill him, there were plenty of other hazards.
Such as the desert that was now his home.
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 12:12 am
Furii nodded; she could understands that way of life, sure, and if his tribe was anything like what it sounded, it was a good philosophy to live by.
"I guess," she responded, shrugging one shoulder. "At its most basic level. But don't you think there's more to life than just defense and offense?" she asked, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.
"I mean...does that make you happpy? The kill or be killed?" she inquired, actually finding herself wanting to know the answer, and she could tell that it was byond simply wanting knowledge about other people's beliefs. She wanted to know /his/ thoughts, what he wanted, what he believed.
She just...he interested her. There was nothing wrong with that, right?
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 12:17 am
"Does it make you happy, that the sun rises in the east?" He shrugged. "It's just life."
"I'm alive, I'm uninjured, I'm not miserable. What more is there to want from life?"
Once he had wanted to leave the desert, because it had made him miserable. But he had adapted, and that had changed. So what else was there for him to want from life?
Friends. He could never see himself having them. A mate? Even less so. Children? The only point of them was to keep up numbers. Children were a tool in the war of the elements, nothing more and nothing less.
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 12:25 am
"Yes, it does. Without it, it'd be dark all the time," Furii answered, smiling innocently over at him.
"Well, personally, I'd like to be better friends..." or more, the thought came unbidden into her head, "and maybe someday a mate, or children of my own." Furii shrugged and looked away from him for the first time, over to the other side of the oasis, where Kirke and Tiya and all the other children Furii had seen come and go from BCRs to adulthood and to children of their own...
She shook her head to clear it with a quiet sigh, then looked back at him. "I apologize. What were you about to say?"
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 12:28 am
"Not that the sun rises at all. Does it make you happy that it rises in the east, instead of the west," Kalevi clarified, pushing his point. Nature was nature, and little about it made him happy or unhappy.
"Better friends with whom?" Surely not with him. She had never talked much about her friends in the tribe (and he had never asked), but he knew he couldn't be the only one she had.
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 12:37 am
"With you," Furii said simply, deciding to ignore the whole sunrise/sunset issue; at this point, she was just happy that the sun rose at all.
"Can I ask you something?" She fixed him with a piercing gaze and continued without waiting for an answer. "Do you want to be better friends with me someday? It seems like we could both use a good one." Furii was pleased with the way things had been developing with them lately...it was just that sometimes it was nice to hear things out loud.
Mentally, though, she prepared herself in case he said no and went back to being an antisocial jackass: it wouldn't be surprising, and it wouldn't do for her to react badly, let alone show it.
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 12:40 am
"That was two somethings," he pointed out, with wry amusement.
"No, I don't want to be better friends with you." But he doubted that would be enough to get her to stop. She had somehow managed to worm her way into being his friend (or something like that) in the first place, and damned if he knew how.
It wasn't something he wanted, but something he was sure would happen anyway.
He wasn't sure he didn't want it, either.
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 12:50 am
It was a good thing she was prepared, she decided, but with the preparation came the realization that she didn't care.
Giving up was not in her vocabulary, and she had made it this far.
"I'll just have to stick around until you do," Furii answered, a flicker of a smile coming to her face. She looked over her deep red shoulder again and took a deep breath; even though the answer had been expected, it still...almost hurt a little bit.
Would she never just get something she wanted? With a few more breaths, looking away from Kalevi still, she reminded herself about life--that it wasn't fair, sometimes things went wrong, and that nothing came easy, especially not foxes you could count on.
"Don't you ever get bored staying over here all the time?" Furii asked, turning her attention back to him, her face flat and bordering on unemotional once again. She was getting too comfortable with him, a part of her warned, and next time she wouldn't be ready for his hurt. She needed to be more careful, much more careful.
The problem was that she didn't want to be.
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 12:57 am
He watched in confusion as she turned away from him, and then turned back again, face now flat and emotional. He recognized the flatness, from kits and recruits, who were trying to hide their hurt.
He had hurt her? It seemed...odd. She had come over plenty of times before, having no heed for what he said or did to try to drive her away. And now, finally, he had hurt her, without even trying.
He felt the vaguest hints of an emotion stirring in his gut. Something that might be akin to guilt.
He ignored it; he wasn't going to lie to her just to spare her feelings.
"I'm not here all the time," he pointed out. "I hunt, and I scout." He used to spend more time away from the main tribe than at it. It was only recently that he was here so often.
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 1:10 am
"True," Furii acquiesced but she couldn't help but press the point. "But what about fun?" she asked, tail twitching slightly. She knew this was probably the wrong tac to take, so she shook her head.
"I mean, do you ever want to do anything that isn't necessary for your survival here? Like...just take a leisurely walk? Give a kit a meaningless riddle to figure out? Explore?" Furii shrugged one shoulder, out of ideas that she didn't have to work to think of. "Or do you prefer to simply sit?" Some people did--hell, some days, that was all she did, so she could understand it, but she couldn't quite understand doing nothing but.
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 1:17 am
"I explore when I scout," he pointed out. It was part of his job title: exploratory scout.
"I don't sit all day. I'm out more often than not." He tilted his head, regarding her curiously. He had thought she would notice. Not because she paid any special attention to him, but because it was easy to see, even from across the lake, when he was here and when he wasn't.
Part of him did want to get up, and do something. Not because he was tired of sitting (he could sit and simply watch the tribe for days), but because he was unaccustomed to having company for this long. Even Furii's company.
But wouldn't say anything. He wouldn't let on that her mere presence was getting to him.
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 1:24 am
Furii rolled her eyes goodnaturedly, having known she would need to explain.
"I meant, do you ever just go exploring for you, not as part of your duty to the tribe? Or do you not distinguish between the two?"
Of course she noticed when he was and wasn't there. Even when she didn't want to, she was always aware of the emptiness on the other side when he was gone, and she always felt the strangest surge of relief when the outline of his form slunk back across the lands.
She liked to pretend it was the same relief she felt for all the scouts, that they returned safely, but she never noticed when the Phims came and went, yet she was almost always--if subconsciously--checking the other side of the lake to see if he'd come home yet.
So she cared. She cared about a lot of things. Kalevi was no big deal; he was part of her tribe, after all, even if none of the rest of the tribe made her act--or feel-- as peculiarly as he did.
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