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Winter held a dour truth- the Eternal of Gardens was definitively visible making his way anywhere in the city. The uniform was a riot of color and flowers, and many more than red and dark green that graced seasonal decorations that may still be up this late into a new year. Nor did he match the burgeoning reds and pinks of the Victorian St. Valentine’s as it had been appropriated by the machine of consumerism.

The power signature he felt, plainly a knight, was probably shoehorned into the same trouble. Thraen didn’t know many knights, but none one had matched either holiday. They were easy to pick out across the park, though movement helped to draw the human eye, by glint of pauldrons, white cape and familiar rose-faun. Though lengths of details uniformed and personal grooming had changed, here was Celsus, wrote with incandescence as before. Thraen lifted his hand in greeting, and set to crossing the distance at a long stride. Hopefully he doesn’t run the other way.

“Knight of Celsus, it has been some time-” More jewelry, a medallion, less boots, opened collar, missing hand sigils, less hair….

'my friend'

The gesture returned by the Knight, and the distance closed with an unusual flutter to Thraen's stomach. Surprising title, friend, thrown to casual greeting, but feeling genuine in it's cadence. Friends were casual in speech and easy with each other, usually. It echoed strangely to Celsus' stance, with hands behind his back, open but reserved and not inviting clasp of wrists or embrace shoulder to shoulder. The lack was fine, and paled compared to the word even being used. Are we friends? Can we be?

"I have been well. Busy, with the return of semester in session, but academia is a trouble welcome and bracing. And you? It has been overlong...a year at least?" When had it been? January before, he thought, that they'd gone to speak of the Surrounding on the Rainbow Road and the man had been in panics. The invitation to speak someday with the man's ancestor when it was convenient and the thought of the Wonder didn't create panic. The name of the Ancestor defied recall, in that moment, compared with the names of students in the classes he had to act as Graduate Assistant for.

"A long march of months for things to go right or wrong. I have thought of sending message...but worried it would be overbold. Your uniform has altered, at the least?"

"I hope you'll do some studying at the Catfe, then, for your studies. A free tea or coffee at the least waits for you." A last semester was no small feat, often welcome and dread for the loss of direct obligations and life-pattern. The need for a job, shifting priorities, and housing also accompanied that life stage. Thraen himself had avoided the troubles by prolonging the stay with graduate school. Celsus glossed over the time with generalities, indicating the social preference to not go into any of the good or bad in specifics. And what would you talk about, then, Celsus? Does he have a specific aim? Probably not, with a chance meeting. I wonder if we'll walk in silence...I wonder is silence bothers him.

"I would be glad of it, " Thraen gave an acknowledging nod, and turned his step and shoulders to the indicated path. What was too much to press? The man had been nervous before of many things: unknown landmines such as his wonder not the least. Blush and timidity seemed not wholly assuaged. How to gentle shame or guilt, then? Turn conversation hopefully back towards the open, and to compliment gently? "Invitation to company is a welcome luxury."

A twin, and in the Negaverse... It was a situation that would require a greta deal of psychological strength and bravery to navigate, whether the twin was beloved, hated, or any other sort. Family, blood influenced and permeated so much of the self by the design of life and society both, and made the space between such oversensitive and electric in opposition. Then there was no opposition like Chaos, and its so-much-further than murder of life into the very souls of person-kinds. The sorrow is only in that I was apparently....not on the list to help. Whatever impression I've left in Celsus' mind, it was not one defined as helpful or trustworthy. Or...maybe over-harsh. My reputation may have reached his ears, if there is one left of me. But of his heart, and his twin...it seems so very difficult to just speak for him. Pain, indeed. Poor souls.

And there, Celsus used the word others did at times for the state of being with the illuminated lines. Like Hyperborea. Transcended, and all its empty pages in our understanding. But there is a thing. Avoiding his wonder is what caused some of the immense unquiet.

"For my part, there's no apology needed. You were, and are, under no obligations to me. No more than as a friend and ally." That word again, tasting strange and foreign to the mouth. Too hopeful. " For your pains, I am sorrowed, and hope and offer any help I can to you and your purified twin. If you need any, or want of it- it has come to me that some find offense in the offer. Still..."

"It is open. Purifications are never easy. The things this magic does to any of us are never easy. Or we to ourselves. " It would not do to become over sentimental of his own personal mythology, and Thraen squeezed his right hand against the missing-but-ever present jewelry there that Fuku sent to elsewhere. "I didn't know that about Transcendence. I don't know much about it at all in any fashion. "

Hopefully, the open admissions would unobtrusively allow Celsus to switch and hold the stage to that topic if he wanted. To feel helpful and needed and to give information, if it was of comfort after so personal a catharsis as an apology.

We feel Guilt, the heavy stone sitting, for what we have done. We hope we can pass it, cut it, dig it out from our middles and set it on a wall someday. As marker on the road to warn others. Shame, like pebbles in the hollows of our bones where marrow should have been and rattling; we hear it and hate that it is what we are at our cores. Which colors his cheeks now?

"Words can move hearts, the world. Or break it. The words of a Guide no less than any others. " The cadence of the mans words went hither and thither, stumbling and fleeing at parts still uncomfortable. Sleep and time had a tendency to pull away horror, but if it had latched like briar onto uncertainty already there...it might be the cause for guilt to turn into shame. They all had so little choice of mentors. He'd had only flashes himself, and the primer on a phone that offered no opinion one way or another. And if one of the royals, who had at least the title and power to claim authority, had challenged him as unfit?

His opinion was certain that a mirror would show them the same back.

" I am no wise man. " The words were offered as a caveat, on a breath.



" Each of us is different. Some no doubt wish for magic, like some cartoon, to find out they were a Hero in the story in their head. Others had no choice, except survival and instinct, as a youma or agent bore down on their starseed...Mauvian or whatever it is that comes to knight's to tell them they're Harry Potter. Suitability at the start has no bearing on it. Our suitability is defined by us, through our lives, our actions. We will make mistakes- but what would make us unfit would be only to deny, to pretend, or to choose to do evil with this. I will not call it a gift. But we have been given power, and we make the good or bad of it itself. "

"What is a Garden? It could be full of vegetables, pet chickens, fruit trees like a yard in the World Wars for Victory. It could be a conservatory full of deadly plants distilled for medicines. It could be fields of flowers with no more use than butterflies. Or worst of all...it could be a Silent Garden, filled with bodies. What is a cemetery but seeded with lives? It will be what I make of it. But it cannot be judged until the full measure is known, in the end. Until then, I will have all the hours and days to do the best I can with what information I have at the time. " Thraen looked over at the Knight, eyes gentled. It was awkward to speak at length with so personal an example. "So with you, Celsus. You are not mistaken-born to this. It was not your choice. Your choices are what you will do with it, having it ordained onto you already. "

"I think you are fit? You worry about it, and that is a start to keeping realistic. 'Nolo episcopari', after all. "

Social awareness slowed the senshi's paces with the knight's. His attention was already on Celsus, watching the wring of hands, flash of neck and set to the square of his shoulders. The explanation offered, a confession of sorts and equally close to heart, required still gentle response. Curious, nonetheless. 'Female.' You've never asked me if I am 'male.' Whatever is meant by male. Having a p***s and ascribing to machismo, maybe. He must buy in to the cultural norms of 'guys having guy friends' and needing sameness to breed comfort and understanding. But this is definitively not the time to point that out, vulnerable completely and disarmed. This is not the frame of mind for receiving such lessons. Better that at the Catfe, if he should ask me about my attire and approach the conversation himself.


"Verily it is privilege, and we should make our best of it." The words were toned in warm assent, treating Celsus' as a proclamation of certainty, rather than an admission with hesitation. Like

"The best remedy to disservices is to pay them forward in kindness. If it troubles you- come to the Catfe, soon. Have a cup of coffee, tea, cider or cocoa with me. We make use of the time we have, patiently, and know each other better. Do you like books? Reading? Or music. Whatever you like- I like learning best. If you brought something you enjoy very much and were willing to impart your reasons and discussion of it on me, I would be greatly obliged. "

Time is the most precious commodity we all have, and finite, in its way. Until we die.

kuropeco

"This semester the employees I have schedule for afternoon hours on weekdays. So I work the evening shifts of the Catfe. With two weeks notice, however, other hours can be arranged. "

"I have not learned what it is you do for a living, nor from that what sort of schedule is convenient for you?" Did many make it a habit to invite the knight along without actually wanting him present? His general nervousness seemed the source, if there was one, for any reason someone might feel imposed on, since the requirements of constant reassurance had tolls on friends and caretakers to those with anxiety. It became it's own reciprocal gas-lighting, creating an uncertainty of what was being said, understood or intended. A problem I will not have to worry about. My own words and ideas, if nothing else, I can always be sure of the concreteness.


Existence becomes it's own banal imposition. But there, that is melodrama. "The only times that I can't alter around are the morning class I'm Graduate Assistant for, and the office hours required. That's limited 8 in the morning to 12 weekdays. "