Welcome to Gaia! ::

The walk to his apartment wasn't strictly short, but they filled it with talk: It turned out that she could answer quite a lot of questions about how she'd learned to heal, and Aska certainly had a strong interest in that. Who wouldn't be? He was giving up his body and his soul to a god who was patron of healers, all healers, whether they were Psions or not. Aska wanted to know what he gave everything he had for, if nothing else; and Whisteria seemed happy to oblige him. It was nice to be able to walk with someone whom he didn't have to slow down for. In fact, he had to trot to keep up with his companion's longer legs, but it was a nice walk and gave them time to talk without the distraction of songs and dancing.

"So... this is it," he said, gesturing at a red door above a small set of steps. The Chinese food place--he still gave that a side-eye when he passed it, after two years and change--looked as shady as ever, but Aska ignored it as best he could as he unlocked the door and stepped aside so Whisteria could go first. Up a flight of narrow stairs was his apartment; it was small and tidy, full of handmade furniture. Originally he'd had piecemeal furniture which had been assembled with a few bolts from some store run by human machines, but he'd had two years to accumulate the time and money to make pieces of his own--a loveseat, an armchair, a coffee table, a stand for the television and a case for his books. He rarely had guests, but it comforted him to have things to work on, so he didn't stop himself from acting as if he did. Towards the street was a small table with two shapely little chairs; the kitchen was through a door he'd painted white. His bedroom door was nudged discreetly closed. It wasn't a mess, exactly. He hadn't, however, made his bed, which could be rather embarrassing depending on when he'd last done laundry--socks tended to collect at the foot of it, was all.

Aska gestured expansively to the small, well-appointed living room. "Sit where-ever you like," he said, to Althai's quiet sniggering. "I don't mind."

Aska hadn't done this for quite some time--being thrust from the world of your birth, where you knew how things worked and how far you could go before being punished, and into a completely strange one tended to strangle your will to go out drinking, or even to parties--but the motions were still familiar. He crossed the room to the kitchen, leaving the door open behind him. "It took me a while to figure out what they sell here that isn't completely disgusting--back at home, we had this liquor they just called spice liquor, it came from Qaied. That's a very desert-like place... They're a bit odd there. They call their Leader the All-Mother and worship her like a god..." He had a tray, somewhere, and he dug around for it before settling cups and the nearest equivalent he'd found of the spice liquor on it, and carrying it out. He settled on the loveseat, next to Whist, and set the tray down on the coffee table.

"This tastes a bit similar, but it's less... Qaiedan spice liquor is very strongly flavored of cinnamon, and this lacks that." He held up a glass once he'd poured them both half-full, and smiled a little bit awkwardly. "So. Where are you from?"

"It was," he said. "Sometimes if you drank too much you started seeing the weirdest things." The quick smile implied a joke, but he wasn't kidding. The first time he got drunk off the spice liquor had him seeing horrible Caledonian monsters--but then, they'd been at war, and the hellephants might have actually be there. You never knew, was the point he was making in his own head. He took a sip of his drink as he listened attentively.

One part of it threw him, and his eyebrows disappeared under the wavy bangs. "A city on top of a tree," he asked. Sure, there were rumors of the forest people living high up in trees, but no one actually believed them. "And... the whole thing is built on the tree? How do you put down foundations?" He'd only ever studied the most rudimentary forms of architecture, preferring the sculpting work of furniture and canvas frames, but...

He took a deep breath, took a bit deeper of a drink than he'd meant to. The burn was familiar and soothing. "I don't mean to offer any offense, but it sounds very strange to me."

Aska had no idea if she was just having him on, or maybe this s**t was more like spice liquor than he thought. He narrowed his eyes at his glass and tried to decide if there were hellephants parading around. Deciding they weren't, he smiled at Whisteria a bit uncertainly and said, "That sounds fascinating. I guess not many of your people are afraid of bugs?" Well, if they lived in giant trees, they couldn't be like Embla, who shrieked at the sight of a spider. Even his mother had usually called him to handle beetles.

"I can't imagine living in a tree," he said. "How did you grow food?"

He looked up to her, and then laughed. What else was he supposed to do other than look vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of spiders half his size? He only handled the ones he encountered because they were so much smaller. "Well, I guess it's not any weirder than floating cities, and I'm used to those. Is everyone on your world like you, or are there different races, too? Most everyone at home is human." Really, he just like to hear about other people's worlds--it took the edge off missing his own.

It was also a distraction from the topic of his impending death--one they'd thankfully avoided so far.

Night Elves. That was a nice name--a poetic one. They had something that looked like elves at home, but they only existed in stories--they called them the Wind People, actually. He didn't mention this, thinking it might be insensitive to say so. Instead he nodded, and then asked, "You don't like the Forsaken and the Blood Elves very much, do you." Rubbing the side of his face and finishing his drink, he continued, "Is there a reason why?"

It didn't sound very peaceful, but then, he supposed that a society without Psions would have to be. He patted her shoulder, and then slung the same arm over her shoulder--only after pouring the both of them new drinks, though. "We have the undead at home," he said consideringly. "But the lawmakers send them back when they're done finding out who murdered them. That's how it's always been."

He nodded when she described the reason for disliking Blood Elves. "That's... that's sad," he said, furrowing his brow. "The Navigators went insane when the stars disappeared. Almost all of them. And then some of those died. I used to love one of them..." Aska shook his head and took a sip from his drink, and sighed. "She was already crazy, though. Just a poor mad girl unfortunate enough to have psychic powers. Would've been happier as a Mute like me." He was the very model of a muted male, wasn't he? Another sigh--he got very sigh-y when drinking.

Immortality. Hm. ... He'd consider that later, when his brain was sufficiently fuzzy and could handle the idea of people never dying. Sure, some Psions tried. Empaths, mostly, or Worldwalkers. Buuuutttt... it wasn't like any of them actually succeeded. Other Psions always shut them down pretty swiftly. "That's unfortunate," he told her, squeezing her shoulders gently.

"Mutes are people without psychic powers," he explained, flourishing his drink in the air. "Or, well, people who have very weak psychic powers, like me. I had really mild telepathy? It's probably gone now, I haven't used it at all, ever. Never any need to. Like I could hear, but it'd be faint, like a whisper. And I couldn't speak at all. Basically nonfunctional, really. So, Mute." He gave her a considering look, pale eyes narrowing slightly over the crooked nose. "You'd be classed as a Healer, probably... since you can heal and all. That's not a bad fate at all, even if it's not like a Navigator."