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 Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 12:50 pm
 
This is a private role play between Shin Mu [Beejoux] and Yue Lao [Face Your Demons].
Setting:
Oishiburo Bathhouse.
Bath time is potentially ruined when Yue Lao smuggles bubbles into the large bath, probably ruining Shin Mu's relaxation.
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Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 1:12 pm
It was noon, a nice, lazy day, and very hot out. Yue Lao rifled through her bag, standing in the changing room for the girls' side of the Oishiburo Bathhouse. She had already taken her outer robe off and folded it neatly, placed it on the bench. She hadn't undone her braid, though; even in the bathhouse, she wouldn't undo that braid. She hummed to herself, digging through the contents of her bag, enjoying the relief from the heat in her light cotton pants and shirt. It was almost liberating, to be able to walk around so under dressed. If she could get away with it all the time, she would, but that was just inviting trouble.
Finally, she found what she was looking for: an old wine bottle which had been re-corked. Inside, she knew, it was full of a kind of soapy mix. If it was liquid, Yue Lao would mix it; she just didn't always drink her concoctions. This time, she had made a sort of lemon-scented bath bubble liquid. It had been strange and difficult to liquefy her soap, but she managed it, and she was ready to cause trouble. She put the bottle down on top of her stuff, changed out of her outfit, wrapped her towel around herself, and tucked the bottle into her towel. It was kind of conspicuous, but Yue Lao was terribly excited.
She loved bath time, and she loved bubbles even more. It wasn't the same to spoil her mother's clean water at home, though: Yue Lao was aiming large, this time. She padded into the room with the bath exclusively for women, placed her towl to the side, and kept the bottle behind her back as she eased into the water. As casually as she could manage, Yue Lao hid the full bottle underwater, ready to unleash her plot.
After she created the bubble confusion, she wouldn't have a lot of time to have fun with the others, so she was determined to make some friends first. Well, friends wasn't entirely what she was thinking of. More accurately, she was determined to interact with someone and possibly learn about a new Lunarian.
It turned out that her target would be a Lunarian with buttermilk hair. That Lunarian was close enough to Yue for her to casually slip towards her in the water. She was using all her self control not to splash the Lunarian with a belly flop and a cry of BONZAI. That was what she was doing in her head, however, so that she actually walked too close, and slipped into the stranger, recovering by grabbing the other Lunarian's shoulders rather than face plant into her chest. "Well, that was close, too bad it wasn't closer," Yue Lao winked, lingering just a second too long before letting go. Goal one: in progress. Ultimate goal: Approaching steadily, in Yue Lao's mind.
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Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 1:40 pm
She ached. Not just her body, but her entire being, from muscles, to bones, to the fragile ruin of her heart. A constant reminder of what had been, had been wonderful, but was now ruined, broken, betrayed. The thought was enough to make the her lips curl in rage, twisting skin tugging at the healing split that bisected kissable lips with there subtle shimmer of pale gloss.
No she wouldn't dwell on the past, on him, it was too painful, and she'd gone t the bath house to forget, to soak her tired and battered body in the mineral rich warmth of the hot springs. Anything to sooth the hurt, anything to numb the pain. When her mind was blank, eyes closed, it almost worked.
She was lounging along the edge of the steaming pool within the woman's half of the baths. Dark arms crossed over the heated stones that lined the water, chin cradled in the bend of her elbow. Mind drifting as surely as the rose bushed cloud of unbound hair that flowed around her. She wished to do nothing, see no one, and simply be left alone. To disappear in the wavering steam that rose from the water.
Unfortunately that was not to be. She barely registered when another girl slipped into the shared waters. Aware of it, but not really caring. She had no desire to interact, but it didn't seem she'd have the choice. The shock of the other colliding with her brought a startled scream from the dark noble, and she stiffened under the feel of hands on her shoulders, tension singing through her entire body. She was wound tighter then a piano string, and the clumsy stranger was lucky she'd fallen against Shin's back, or she'd have been met with a curl of dark knuckles to her cheek.
She did well to rein in her control, to not lash out or snarl at the other woman as she lingered against Shin's bare back where the towel had slipped from it's tight knot. "You'll have to be more careful." Her words were clipped, a little strained, but surprisingly polite, all things considered. The second the burgundy haired girl had moved away Shin gathered her towel to her chest, slipping a little further away in the hot water. Seeking space.
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Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2010 10:43 am
Yue still had nothing but bubbles on her mind. She tried to set it aside, to make her usual, careful observations. Perhaps the Lunarian was exercising self-restraint in her response, this stranger, but to Yue, the anger she felt was barely concealed. She had spent too long studying the expressions and emotions of others for something so important to slip past her. Yue Lao's smile didn't waver or flicker; if anything, it grew broader. "Careful? To hold on longer, fall more appropriately, grip less tightly? If you were clearer, maybe I would consider more care," Yue responded, tugging on the outer garb she had wrapped around her, making sure it was in place. For some reason, just like her typical over robe, one side of the wrapping seemed to need extra tugging up to stay in place. Perhaps it was the way Yue held herself, and her swagger.
The swagger, admittedly, was a little more difficult to execute in the water. Her pink scales glowed around skin warm from the bath. Yue looked drunk, again. The tips of her fingers were stained purple from her recent brewing, and she scrubbed idly at them before letting her hands fall back in the water. She rested, briefly, looking the stranger up and down. She ended up bringing her hands back up to the surface of the water, and playing it as if it was an instrument, splashing her fingers lighting in it, skimming the surface. She didn't splash the other Lunarian, or at least she didn't think she did. "Maybe our meeting was just fated," Yue suggested, with a wink, shifting her weight so that it emphasized her hips, "You can't blame me for fate, now can you?" Yue Lao laughed, but it was because she knew herself better. Yue Lao didn't believe in fate in that particular sense. She believed in the way that everything seemed to be connected. Tied together, somehow: to pull one string tugged at what was on the other end, even if you couldn't yet see or predict what it was. So Yue saw threads, and tugged.
The stranger seemed upset about something, buried under the layers of herself. Yue tilted her head, wondering what that might be, how to open up the things that covered it, to find out why she seemed so upset. Surely, a stranger bumping her in the bathhouse wasn't cause enough for that.
Remembering why she had initially come here, Yue began to bide her time for the perfect opportunity to release the bubble mix.
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Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 8:52 am
Nimble fingers secured the towel back in place, tucking a corner under the rolled top. Neat, even in the bath house. She watched the stranger all along, a frown resting on pale lips. A sweep of her hand tucked pale lengths of blush hair back behind the point of one ear, exposing the healing clustered of yellowed bruises that marked one side of her face from temple to brow and down along the curve of her cheek. The majority was close to healed, barely visible save for the sickly tinge to dark skin, but in amongst the macabre blooms were darker points, fresher injuries.
She'd taken a beating, two in fact. One delivered before the marks of the previous had even come to full bloom. Her shoulder bore the signs, as well as her hands, her throat. Anything else was hidden by the water or towel.
Snowy brows dipped at the other girl's comments. Creasing over the bridge of her dark nose. A scathing retort burning along her tongue that she ultimately swallowed back, replaced with something far less venomous. "You should always consider care." To her question she could not respond. That such words had been spoken from another woman threw her.
Fate? The mention of it made the her lips curl, and again the tug of split flesh made her pause, school her features back into polite neutrality. Albeit unhappy neutrality. "Can't I? I don't believe in fate." The unspoken not anymore hung in the hair like moisture before a storm.
"You'll have to excuse my temper. I'm afraid you've stumbled upon at the worst possible time, and my mood is a dark thing today."
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Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2010 9:00 pm
Yue Lao watched the stranger tuck and place and smooth, being so careful with her appearance. Yue found that some of those who tried the hardest to stay proper on the outside were often making up for some element of chaos they could not otherwise control. Kind of like trying to compensate. She couldn't help but wonder if the bruises were evidence of whatever chaos she had tried to hide. She couldn't see all of them, nor were a lot of them fresh, but they were there. Yue wondered who had given them to her, under what circumstances. "Are you a push-over, or what?" Yue asked, nodding her head to the bruises. Her expression was neutral, though warm. Yue gathered information; it was what she did. Sometimes her comments were too direct. Sometimes it helped her out.
It also seemed like the stranger had a lot of anger hidden within her. Yue would have to test that, needle her until her anger showed. She didn't seem like she was an individual with much inner peace, especially not with her facial expressions, tone of voice, nor repetitive smoothing. "You should always consider what you're saying, and what absolutes you use. Care is still very vague. Should I care for you? Me? Everyone? Should I take care, give care, want for care? Should I exercise care in my speech, or should I exercise care to meddle? Ambiguous," Yue Lao spouted off, counting just some of the many reasons she could think of for the use of the word care.
Yue cupped her chin in her hand, holding her elbow in her free hand. She pursed her lips as she regarded the stranger. Yue grinned when she said she didn't believe in fate, but she could hear the hanging words the stranger didn't say. Not what they were, but the fact that there was something beneath and apart from her initial statement. "Well, good. That may be the one thing we agree on. Isn't fate wonderful that way?" Yue's eyes glittered.
"Dark or light mood, they don't change anything for me," Yue said, tipping her head to the side. "I know what would make the mood lighter, for at least one of us, though!..." With that, Yue turned on her heel, which took effort in the water, and walked back to the corner of the pool. She reached into the water and uncorked the bottle of bubbles, swishing it around the bath, making a round of the bath and splashing the bubbles into life, stirring it up. By the time she returned to the stranger, she had no bottle, and the bath was full of little bubbles floating around. "Much better," Yue said, grinning wildly and building castles out of the bubbles.
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Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 9:16 am
Shin had tucked herself against the wall of the spring. One small hand pressing back against the layered stones behind her while the other had a death grip on her towel. The bluntness of the other girl's question had earned her cold glower. "I am not, these are all tokens from battles." Her voice was cold, and no amount of irritation could mask the thread of defensiveness that had leaked into her response.
The conversation did not swell there though, and for that Shin was thankful, though here it lead was perhaps just as aggravating. Lily green eyes widened a touch, and the noble couldn't help but wonder if this was just the other girl's normal character, or if she was deliberately digging at Shin's fragile patience. There was something in her voice, in her expression that suggested it was the latter. "Care should be taken in all things. Ambiguity works just dandy for it."
A moment was taken to look at the stranger before her, really look at her. Sun kissed skin, flushed cheeks, an a length of dark braid trailing in the water behind her. Did she attend the academy? She couldn't recall, though she would have to assume she did, as she looked younger then Shin.
Wonderful would not have been her choice of words to describe fate. Frankly she didn't care to dwell on it, so she let the question go unanswered, focusing instead on what else she had to say. She might have spoken, but whatever words she had died on her tongue as thousands of white bubbles sprung up aorund them. Filling the entire spring with dense suds. "What did you do?" Her voice seemed conflicted. Part angry at the mess that'd been made of the bathes, part intrigued.
((Aaarg, not the best post, but it'll have to work.))
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Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 6:56 pm
Shin Mu's cold glower elicited nothing but a short giggle from Yue, which she attempted to stifle. It was such an unattractive expression, Yue wondered at her. If Yue had to use one word to describe the Lunarian, it would be sour. A sour flower, perhaps; she seemed pretty, but the bitterness remove whatever of her Yue might have found pleasing to the eye. Sour flower sounded strange, perhaps; sour blossom, on the other hand, was Yue's new nickname for the girl. It, by and large, said all she wished of the Lunarian. "You must not be very good, or else your opponents are quite good," Yue said, her eyes glittering and reflecting the light of the water. Her soft, sunkissed skin seemed somehow eerie and Other with the pattern of the water flitting across it. Yue said what she thought, without pause or hesitation.
"Oh, is that so, sour blossom? In all things? Then I guess I will take care in my refusal to take care; mind I don't slip up," Yue responded, her answer rhythmic, almost as if she was reciting a poem or some written text. Yue could, indeed, read; one of the skills Yowai had imparted in her, at Chishio's request. The response she had given Shin Mu, however, was one of Yue Lao's curiosities. Too much of her seemed rooted in riddles and chaos. "If care must be taken in all things, then I suppose you care for me, about me? Care about your enemies, your friends, the strangers in the street. Care in all things is a heavy weight on your brow, but not on mine!" Yue sensed her nature diverted from that of Shin Mu quite cleanly, and there was little or no overlap. Yue was delighted to learn this, in the sense that studying her would prove quite enlightening. After all, the less someone was like her, the more they had to show her of their perceptions.
Yue, of course, noticed when things were dropped in conversation, misplaced or mishandled. She lodged Shin Mu's avoidance of fate into her memory and considered it for later use. "I didn't really do anything in particular, I just enabled. I'm an enabler," Yue said, giggling. "What's nicer on the skin or the eyes than a bath full of bubbles?" With that, Yue sculpted herself a beard out of bubbles, grinning. Yue's cryptic patterns reflected whoever she spoke with. Shin Mu was so unlike her that Yue's differences became exaggerated. It was nothing like how she was with Jianyu, but of anyone, Jianyu was the one most capable of eliciting sincerity from underneath Yue's touch of madness.
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Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 2:55 pm
Shin's temper was boiling as surely as the mounds of pearly bubbles that were welling up around them. It had cooled for an instant when the suds had first appeared, but The stranger before her had picked up right where the noble had hoped to avoid. "That isn't really any of your business, is it?" Dark fingers and drifted from the top of her towel to smooth down along the front of it, despite the lack of wrinkles. It was a habitual gesture, a compulsion that was likely to remain through out her life.
"I stand by my comment. One can never be too careful." Perhaps if she simply refused to argue the conversation would shift. Or better yet, perhaps this odd young lady would grow tired of her unfriendly demeanor and wander off. The last was a fools hope though, and Shin had made a very recent promise to herself to never again be made a fool of.
Stubbornly turning from the other comment Shin-mu turned her attention instead to the spreading bubbles. Luck had kept them from flooding over her, and she stood in a small circle of clear water, untouched. A perfectly painted finger tip prodded one of the closer suds, bursting it. "Is this soap?" She drew a deeper breath, letting the scent linger on her pallet as she tried to deduce just what it was. She didn't mind soap, in fact she quite liked it. If it were not soap.. Best not to think about that.
She looked up from the foam to see the other girl sporting a beard formed of the pearly bubbles, grinning at her, and she could only frown in return. How uncouth. The set of her lips changed, twitching up at one corner as pale brows narrowed. This girl was not from a noble line, Shin would have placed money on that fact, and the noble herself felt a small spurt of self-satisfaction.
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Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 6:41 pm
Yue Lao was still smiling, like she knew a secret no one else could possibly know. The satisfaction and enjoyment were evident in her posture, too, and the relaxed way she splashed her hands around in the water. "My business is brewing, so if I could only talk about what I intend to do for money, I would have very limited conversational skills," Yue Lao answered, grinning. She feigned ignorance to any other meaning of the word business. Yue Lao observed Shin Mu's smoothing, again. It made her want to lean forward and mess the towel up, pluck at the threads until they stood out, ungainly loops in the smooth fabric. She didn't, though; it was far more likely she would just tug the towel away, and that wasn't her agenda at the time.
"That's not what you said before! Take care, and never being too careful are entirely different. I could understand the latter, but I don't think you mean what you say with the former. Not a bit," Yue Lao said, winking. She pursed her lips at Shin Mu, and let the comments she was avoiding drop for now. "Soap? Clearly, they are bubbles," Yue responded, with her grin slipping just shy of totally self-satisfied.
Shin Mu's frown elicited cascading laughter from Yue Lao. "So all you do is stand there and frown at things? Instruct others how to live, with your smoothing," Yue Lao mimicked Shin Mu and smoothed her rather wrinkled, sopping wet undershirt down, "and your disapproving looks, and your demand for care? All those secrets kept." Yue Lao looked Shin Mu over, placing one hand on her hip and stroking her bubble beared thoughtfully with the other hand. "All your sourness taints you," Yue said, waggling a finger at Shin Mu.
She reached into the water with both hands, scooping up a pile of bubbles, and blew hard at Shin Mu, giggling afterwards. Yue hadn't missed the self-satisfaction on Shin Mu's face though, of course, she didn't know what it was about. Yue wasn't bothered in the least. It was terribly amusing to her, to taunt and tease the sour lunarian.
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 10:31 am
Petty though it was, the thought that class separated them brought a manner of calm to the noble. Her irritating comments, her prying questions had been grating on Shin's frazzled nerves, and she could admit to having forgotten herself, lost her temper. She'd allowed this stranger to dig at her resolve, but no more. She was a proud member of the Noble retainer, the daughter of high ranked nobility, and a studying soul conduit. She refused to let this daffy woman provoke her further with circular arguments and riddles.
"The conversational skills you claim to posses seem quite limited already." She'd ceased her endless pursuit of order in the press of the towel wrapped around her slender frame, hands lost in the water at her sides. The creep of the bubbles had closed around her, and suds clung to her waist, climbed her arms.
"I know what I said, and if you fail to see the logic in my words, then I should save my breath and intellect for someone more deserving." A cold smile had crept over split lips, pale eyes clear and focused. "Your circular responses are tiring. I'll take my frowns and sour taint and leave you to your childish bubbles and lonely word games." Yue could only get under Shin's skin so long as she allowed it to happen, and she was not going to tolerate it any longer.
Not even the spray of bubbles could reignite her cooling temper. It was soap, and that was one of Shin's dearest friends. She brushed the suds from her cheek with the pad of her thumb, rinsing them away away in the tiny pocket of clear water that remained beside the rocky edging of the pool. "You've gotten your last raise out of me," Shin mused, smiling benignly as she lifted herself from the steaming bath. She paused to collect her belongings. A dry towel, folded neatly, and dark bamboo flute. Her dizi, her medium.
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Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 5:38 pm
Imprecision: Shin Mu, Yue Lao observed, was full of imprecision. Her gestures seemed tenuous, she did not listen well, and she changed what she said but continued to argue it as if it was the same thing all along. In that way, Yue Lao doubted Shin Mu's observational skills and suitability for further observations. Shin Mu's haughtiness was fragile; Yue Lao was not in the least convinced by it. The bruises, and the way her initial reaction had been to lash out, made it seem almost as though this new-found self assurance was merely an attempt to console herself. As if Yue Lao's opinions and observations didn't matter. "Now, sour blossom, I never said I possessed conversational skills!" Yue tilted her head to the side, laughing. "You keep making things up, but you can't reorder everything so that you like it better. No wealth in the world can reorder existence itself," Yue said, tapping herself on the nose, thinking, her smile ever fixed in place.
"Well, you don't know what you said, sour blossom, not if you keep changing what you said. You care, take care, keep care, have care. You can tell yourself you're right, but that doesn't mean you are," Yue added, listing the different meanings off on her fingers, then pursing her lips. "Your breath is air from a musty tomb, your intellect is your reflection in the water. I don't need either of them," Yue laughed. Yue had so many insults, bubbling just under the surface; not out of anger, or irritation, but a desire to needle Shin Mu. She decided against them, however, and kept silent; why should she play all her cards just then? Yue was perfectly content to let the girl feel as though she had won. She was undoubtedly from a higher class, the way she treated the world like it was hers. Yue was made of life and light; Shin Mu, to Yue Lao, represented the obsession one might have for one's own reflection. She could consider herself beautiful, intelligent, graceful, refined; and yet, in her nature there was a cruel edge which made her just as much an animal as anyone else. Yue Lao didn't feel the need to show her that. If the girl went through life perpetually ignorant, that was her business.
"Better than starting is knowing when to stop," Yue said, content she had elicited so much irritation out of Shin Mu already regardless, "Should consider learning how to defend yourself better, sour blossom! All those bruises make for an ugly garden," Yue finished, blowing Shin Mu a kiss from the water. All her playing had left her tired, and she wanted nothing more than to bask in the bubbles and play her lonely word games. In actuality, she wanted some time to work out some difficult measurements for spiced wine which wasn't working quite right, in her opinion. She felt they were a little too overbearing, still, ruining the delicate flavour of the fruit. Perhaps a different cask... Yue Lao pulled herself up out of the water near Shin Mu, now relatively oblivious to the Lunarian, splashing her feet up and down in the water. She was kicking sudsy water up all the while, splashing all around her. Yes, a cask out of a flavourful wood, that might affect the spiced wine in a good way. She would have to find someone who worked with wood in order to design new casks.
Just like that, Yue Lao had moved on from Shin Mu. Yue had a bad habit of considering other Lunarians as nothing more than subjects in her observations, something she could set down at any time.
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Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 10:01 am
A shiver traced the line of her spine as cool air rushed in the leech the warmth from mineral kissed skin. It wasn't a cool day, but the difference of temperatures could still be shocking if you spent enough time in the steaming baths. She had every intention of simply walking away from the other youth. Of simply ignoring her needling banter and going about her business, but..
She couldn't tune her out completely, and her words were like an annoying p***k, picking carelessly at what little reserve the poor noble had left. She had managed three quick steps from the edge of pool before that gleeful voice pulled her to a stop. Making things up? Shin turned a dark look on the sun kissed girl behind her, bristling n her indignation at the very assumption that she would speak selfish fabrications to suit her liking. It was outrageous!
She let the legion's words wash over her, get to her. Ware away at what little patience and resolve she had left to her, and that was the only excuse she had for what she did next. Yue had harassed her, harassed her! And so soon after her little world had come crumbling down around her ears. She couldn't handle it, and her temper, cooled briefly by her own self worth, flared back to life as she turned, dropping her towel and clutching her flute to her side.
Bare feet were silent along the slick stone as she walked back, a molten grip on length of her dizi as she glared at the back of the Yue's head. "You know not, of what you speak." Her voice was furious. The heel of her foot pressed into the other girl's back between the curves of her shoulder blades, and she pushed, hard. Sending the legion back into her bubbling mess. It wasn't dignified, it wasn't proper, but it brought a selfishly satisfied smile to the noble's lips all the same.
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Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 10:18 am
It wasn't often that apparitions pushed Yue Lao off of things, but for a moment, that's how startled she was. She really had been preoccupied with her brewing thoughts, so much so that she didn't hear Shin Mu walking up behind her. Then there was her foot, planted against her back, and the force that sent Yue Lao off the edge of the baths and plunging into the water. Yue sank a little, swallowed way too much of the bubblebath, and came back up spluttering for air. She couldn't swim, so the familiar panic of being enveloped in water nearly overwhelmed her, until her feet had found purchase on the bath tiles. She couldn't respond to Shin Mu's actions just then; she was still hacking water up from her lungs, trying to get a good breath. Her eyes stung with soap and her hair was a sopping weight against her back, its tie straining at the weight. She groped at the side of the bath for where she had left a towel. It was mostly soaked from her splashing, but she found a dry portion and wiped at her face. That done, she pulled herself, sopping wet, out of the bath.
She shook like an animal might, spraying water all over Shin Mu. "For not knowing, it sure did a pretty good job of making you react," she said, with laughter that turned into watery coughing. Her eyes were red from the stress of the bubbles.
"Oh, Noble sour blossom, I think you've just found yourself a fight," she said, grinning nonetheless. If Shin Mu had all this aggression, enough that she thought she could just push Yue Lao around, Yue was intent on settling this like the war demanded: a battle.
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