Welcome to Gaia! ::

Kom el Shoqafa wasn’t exactly one to complain about the weather, typically being able to adapt with a little bit of time and the things that he’d learned over his lifetime. However, when the heat was getting so bad that people were actually being hospitalized, he was more than ready to simply leave to go on what others thought was a vacation, especially given there were a couple of weeks where he was explicitly off of work, so he left.

Most people wouldn’t think that going to Saturn would be the choice for getting away from the heat, but as he appeared at his wonder, rucksack on his back and a cooler at his feet, hand holding onto the handle of said cooler. But? He had work to do, and therefore might as well take advantage of that fact when it was much cooler there than home.

Of course, there was also the matter of company, staying home would be a bore but here…?

“Oh, ho, ho, look who’s here?” A familiar, teasing voice welcomed him as he moved to set the cooler against a wall, rucksack atop it, the ghost of his great-great-many times great-grandmother, Aikaterine watching as she made herself known. “Decided you missed me too much~?”

Lucis let out a heavy sigh, shaking his head and opening the bag – pulling out what looked to be a itiny tent as he began to put it together. “It’s rather hot where I live on Earth, Granma Kat. And I needed to come by here, anyway. What, surely you can’t be that desperate for company to be excited by me being here?”

The two teased, voices warm all the while. While they hardly knew everything there was to know about each other, they were able to converse easily. Much better than the first time he had arrived, when she had been quite…angry, broken pottery flying around and hitting him until she was able to recognize that he was in fact the new Knight chosen for the wonder.

And ever since, he had been slowly bringing things to the catacombs – or well, not the catacombs themselves, but the building above, a significant portion of the wonder itself below ground. He hadn’t made his way below ground just yet – there was much to do and repair here above ground, with thorns and dark, possibly lifeless trees getting closer and closer to the building itself.

Which…well. There was a reason he had brought a small, one person tent with him. While he was fairly certain it wouldn’t rain or anything of the sort on him, he wanted to be certain of that – and having the tent meant when he slept, his own body heat would help him keep warm given Saturn wasn’t known for being warm, especially in a location that wasn’t truly meant for the living.

“Anything exciting happening on Earth? Found yourself a boyfriend? Girlfriend? Friendfriend? You don’t really seem to have many friends, doesn’t that bother you?”

Leave it to Granma Kat to get to the point – or one of many points she seemed intent on driving home. While Lucis wasn’t much of a social butterfly, devoting himself to his work, his ancestor was quite the opposite. She’d done her duty, done what she needed to do, but she had been known to be the oddly cheerful Saturn Knight when she had still been alive. And given how she had been, she only wanted the best for him.

Too bad they couldn’t agree on just what the best was, plastic and metal coming together as he got his tent upright, pressed into a corner before throwing the rucksack inside to keep any wind from blowing it away.

“No, I don’t have time for that,” he said after a long moment, just taking a breath. “I have my students to teach, and now all of this to take care of. When am I supposed to find time for a love life, or even a life?” Of course, part of that was on him – he kept himself so busy on purpose. He’d not had the greatest of times as a kid, and that left him with having difficulty forming attachments.

Especially when so many of the people he had known growing up began to turn up missing. Truly, the number of people who had gone missing from Destiny City over the years was astonishing. It was surprising to him that nothing bigger had ever gotten involved with solving that, what took so many people away, so many families now incomplete.

“Well, you should make time for that,” Aikaterine said lightly. “What is the point of being alive if you don’t go out there and live your life?”

Rolling his eyes, he began moving, grabbing a broom brought from a previous trip to sweep the room clean before moving on to the next.

“I have my life. You had yours. I know you probably want the bloodline to continue and all that, really, I do, but that isn’t my responsibility. I don’t owe that to anyone, including you.” The argument was…well, about as old as their relationship was, it being one of the first things they had talked about when Aikaterine had come to her senses and treated him as friend, not foe. “What I do with my life? Is mine to choose. No one has been exactly…no one’s stood out to me, not that I could actually consider anything with, anyway. And with this whole thing, is it even advisable for me to have some…some potential romantic partner who I couldn’t share everything with? I don’t know if I could do that. I mean, maybe, if I ever find someone, but until I do so…then no, I’m doing what I want, what I can, when I want.”

“Yes, but what happens when you die?” Granma Kat’s voice was soft…soft, but serious. “There are others in different branches of the bloodline, but none as direct as you. What will happen here when you die?”

“Granma, you know well and good what will happen. You’ll get to move on, probably, or something. I’m hardly an expert of how things happen with all this space magic mumbojumbo, but only one of us can be here, right? Which means you’d get to go be…free.” Lucis kept sweeping, knowing ultimately it wouldn’t matter much but it kept him busy without being too taxing. “There are others out there, I’m sure someone will come along eventually to fill the hole or whatever. I will do what I want, when I want, and how I want.”

There was a pause and when he looked up, Aikaterine was nowhere to be seen. He knew she probably hadn’t gone far, but…

It didn’t seem they would agree on that – and he was fine with that. But the fact that it hurt her so was…less than pleasant, leaving him with a rolling feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with how little he’d eaten today.